Yes. As a child he had walked in Regent’s Park-odd, he thought, how the thought of childhood keeps coming back to me- the result of seeing Clarissa, perhaps; for women live much more in the past than we do, he thought. They attach themselves to places; and their fathers- a woman’s always proud of her father. Bourton was a nice place, a very nice place, but I could never get on with the old man, he thought. There was quite a scene one night-an argument about something or other, what, he could not remember. Politics presumably.

Yes, he remembered Regent’s Park; the long straight walk; the little house where one bought air-balls to the left; an absurd statue with an inscription somewhere or other. He looked for an empty seat.