‘Yes, beautiful,’ she murmured, looking up at him with a certain dark homage.

He closed his eyes and looked aside, triumphant.

‘Why,’ said Ursula, ‘did you make the horse so stiff? It is as stiff as a block.’

‘Stiff?’ he repeated, in arms at once.

‘Yes. LOOK how stock and stupid and brutal it is. Horses are sensitive, quite delicate and sensitive, really.’

He raised his shoulders, spread his hands in a shrug of slow indifference, as much as to inform her she was an amateur and an impertinent nobody.

‘Wissen Sie,’ he said, with an insulting patience and condescension in his voice,