Like all men of his class, Dubrov had had an English governess and spoke the language fluently. Yet beneath his words, as he began to describe the journey he would make, there beat the grave exotic rhythm that enables the Slavs to make poetry even of a laundry list.

‘We shall embark at Liverpool,’ he said, addressing all the girls yet speaking only to one, ‘on a white ship of great comfort and luxury; a ship with salons and recreation rooms and even a library… a veritable hotel on which we shall steam westwards across the Atlantic with its white birds and great green waves.’

Here he paused for a moment, recalling that Maximov, his premier danseur, had managed to be seasick on a five-minute ferry crossing of the Neva, but rallied to describe the beneficial effects on the Company of the ozone, the excellent food, the long rest as they lay back on deck-chairs sipping beef-tea… ‘But when at last we reach the port of Belem in Brazil, our real adventure will only just be beginning. For the ship will enter the mouth of the greatest river in the world — the Amazon — and for a thousand miles we shall steam up this waterway which is so mighty that they call it the Rio Mare… the River Sea.’

He spoke on, untroubled by considerations of accuracy, for the flora and fauna of Brazil were quite unknown to him, and as he spoke Harriet closed her eyes — and saw…

She saw a white ship steaming in silence along the mazed waterways of the River Sea… She saw a shimmering world in which trees grew from the dusky water only to find themselves embraced by ferns and fronds and brilliantly coloured orchids. She saw an alligator slide from a gleaming sand-bar into the leaf-stained shallows… and the grey skeleton of a deodar, its roots asphyxiated by the water, aflame with scarlet ibis…

Standing in the bows of the ship as it steamed through this enchanted world, Harriet saw a raven-haired woman, pensive and beautiful: La Simonova, the Maryinsky’s brightest jewel and beside her, manly and protective, the leonine premier danseur, Maximov… She saw, streaming away from them on either side like a formation of wild geese in flight, the white-clad dancers who would be Simonova’s snowflakes and cygnets and sylphides… and saw a golden-eyed jaguar peer from the trellis of green in wonder at the sight.

Dubrov had reached the ‘wedding of the waters’, the place where the leaf-brown waters of the Amazon flowed distinct and separate beside the black waters of the Negro. It was up this Stygian river that he now took them and there — shining, dazzling, its wonder reflected in Harriet’s suddenly opened eyes — was the green and gold dome of the Opera House soaring over the roofs of the city.

‘We shall be giving Swan Lake, Fille Mal Gardée and Casse Noisette,’ said Dubrov. ‘Also Giselle — and The Dying Swan if Pavlova does not sue.’ He paused to wipe his forehead and Harriet saw the homesick Europeans, the famous ‘rubber barons’, leaving their riverside palaces clad in their opera cloaks, their richly attired wives beside them, saw them converge in boats from the river’s tributaries, in carriages, in litters carried through the jungle, on to the Opera House ablaze with light… heard their gasps of wonder as the curtain rose on Tchaikovsky’s coolly sumptuous woodland glade — while outside the howler monkeys howled and the brilliantly plumaged parakeets flew past.

Dubrov paused to light a cigar and threw a quick glance at Harriet. Even with her eyelashes she listens, he thought — and went on to speak of the ‘Arabian Nights’ lifestyle of the audience for whom they would dance. ‘There is a woman who has her carriage horses washed down in champagne,’ he said, ‘and a man who sends back his shirts to London to be laundered,’ — and here Madame smiled, for as she had expected a small frown mark had appeared between Harriet’s eyebrows.

Harriet did not think it necessary to wash carriage horses in champagne or to send one’s laundry five thousand miles to be washed.

Dubrov now was nearing the end of his discourse. Lightly, almost dismissively, he touched on the triumph, the innumerable curtain calls which would follow their performances of the old ballets blancs, chosen particularly to appeal to those exiled from their own culture; then with a last flourish he brought the Company back to England, laden with jewels and silverware, with ocelot and jaguar skins — to loud acclaim and an almost certain engagement at the Alhambra, Leicester Square.

‘You may go now,’ said Madame when Dubrov had been thanked, and as the girls slipped out Phyllis could be heard saying, ‘I wouldn’t fancy going out there, would you? Not with all those creepy-crawlies!’

‘And the Indians having a gobble at you, I shouldn’t wonder,’ added Lily.

But when Harriet prepared to follow her companions, Madame barred her way. ‘You will remain behind, Harriet,’ she commanded. And as Harriet turned and waited by the door, her hands respectfully folded, she went on, ‘Monsieur Dubrov came here to recruit dancers for the tour he has just described to you. He has seen your work and would be willing to offer you a contract.’

‘Your lack of experience would of course be a disadvantage,’ interposed Dubrov quickly. ‘Your salary would naturally be less than that of a fully trained dancer.’

It was this haggling, this evidence that she was not simply dreaming, that effected the extraordinary change they now saw in the girl.

‘You are offering me a job?’ she said slowly. ‘You would take me?’

‘There is no need to sound so surprised,’ snapped Madame. ‘Any pupil in my advanced class has reached a professional standard entirely adequate for the corps de ballet of a South American touring company.’

Harriet continued to stand perfectly still by the door of the room. She had brought up her folded hands to her face as women do in prayer, and her eyes had widened, lightened — shot now with those flecks of amber and gold which had seemed to vanish after her mother’s death.

‘I shall not be allowed to go,’ she said, addressing Dubrov in her soft, carefully modulated voice. ‘There is no possible way that I can get permission; and I am only eighteen so that if I run away, I shall be pursued and retrieved and that will make trouble for others. But I shall never forget that you wanted me. Never, as long as I live, shall I forget that.’

And then this primly reared girl with her stiff academic background came forward and took Dubrov’s hand and kissed it.

Then she gave Madame her réverénce and would have left the room, but Dubrov seized her arm and said, ‘Wait! Take this… there may after all be a miracle.’ And as she took the card with his address, he added, ‘You will find me there or at the Century Theatre until April the 25th. If you can reach me before then, I will take you.’

‘Thank you,’ said Harriet; then she curtseyed once more and was gone.

Edward Finch-Dutton was dissecting the efferent nervous system of a large and somewhat pickled dogfish. The deeply dead elasmobranch lay in a large dish with a waxed bottom, pins spearing the flaps of its rough and spotted skin. The familiar smell of formalin which permeated the laboratory beat its way not unpleasantly into Edward’s capacious and somewhat equine nostrils. He had already sliced away the roof of the cranium and now, firmly and competently — his large freckled hands doing his bidding perfectly — he snipped away at the irrelevant flotsam of muscle, skin and connective tissue to reveal, with calm assurance, the creature’s brain.

‘The prosencephalon,’ he pronounced, pointing with his seeker at the smooth globular mass, and the first-year students surrounding him in the Cambridge Zoology laboratory nodded intelligently.

‘The olfactory lobes,’ continued Edward, ‘the thalamencephalon. And note, please, the pineal gland.’

The students noted it, for with Dr Finch-Dutton’s dissections the pineal gland could be noted, which was not always so with lesser demonstrators. Eagerly they peered and scribbled in their notebooks, for their own specimens awaited them, set out on the long benches of the lab.

So assured was Edward, so predictable the state of things in the cartilaginous fishes, that as he proceeded downwards towards the medulla oblongata, squirting away intrusive blood clots with his water bottle, he was free to pursue his own thoughts. And his thoughts, on this day when he was to dine at her house, were all of Harriet.

Edward had not intended to marry for a considerable period of time. Having obtained his Fellowship it was obviously sensible to wait, for he agreed with the Master of St Philip’s that eight or even ten years of celibacy was not too great a price to pay for the security of an academic life.

Yet he intended to lead Harriet to the altar a great deal sooner than that. True, he would see very little of her: St Philip’s rules about women in the College were particularly strict, but it would be good to know that she was waiting for him somewhere in a suitable house on the edge of the town. Her quiet and gentle presence, the intelligent way she listened would be deeply comforting to a man who had set himself, as he had done, the onerous task of definitively classifying the Aphaniptera. In five years — no, perhaps that was rash — in eight years, when he had published at least a dozen papers and his ascent of the promotional ladder was secure, he would let her have a baby. Not just because women never seemed to know what to do without little babies, but because he himself, coming from an old and distinguished family, would like to have an heir.

He laid down his scissors, picked up his forceps, began to prise up the left eyeball — and paused to look at Jenkins, a sixteen-stone rugger Blue from Pontypridd. Jenkins was much given to fainting and eyeballs, so Edward had found, were always difficult.