Mr. Garrett made pretence of not having heard the enquiry, for reasons which Julian was at no pains to guess, having watched his guest's display of incompetence with some dismay throughout the afternoon.
"I want you to notice the strange, strong atmospheric smell of decay in these lanes, Iris," said Mr. Garrett, taking control of the conversation in a high-handed manner that precluded further idle enquiries on the day's sport.
"The whole place is redolent of winter and the dying year. We realists must take in deep draughts of atmosphere."
To which Iris rather inadequately responded by a high, squeaking enquiry as to Douglas's dreadful, dreadful gun and the possibility of its going off unexpectedly and killing her.
Miss Marchrose fell into step between Mark and Julian, her hands thrust boyishly into the pockets of her coat.
"Iris is afraid of getting more atmosphere than she bargained for," said Mark, with a laugh. "A shooting accident would make first-rate copy, I suppose."
"I wonder," said Julian. "The interest attaching to violent action always appears to me to be rather a fictitious one."
"So it is," Miss Marchrose answered quickly. "Surely in real life the majority of dramas are almost devoid of violent action, nowadays. I mean that a crisis, off the stage, is not necessarily brought about by a duel, or a murder, or an elopement."
"The world is more subtle than it used to be," Julian assented. "What you call a crisis, after all is mostly an affair of the emotions. It is generally led up to by an atmospheric tension and culminates in some ultra violence of emotion, whether of anger or sorrow or resolution."
Miss Marchrose glanced up quickly at the last words, and although it was too dark for him to see her expression, Sir Julian again felt with certainty that some inexplicable telepathy had conveyed to him her thought.