I’ve always enjoyed the reading-poetry-with-the-Melancholy-Curate-and-his-sister scene for the building sensual tension:
"By the time the Curate’s Sister finishes reading that business about the seven sorrows, her voice is trembling a little, all three of you are faintly flushed and the temperature in the room has risen appreciably." The failure text gives and addition clue as to the poem’s contents: "The Curate gets as far as a slightly anatomical reference and a distinctly pagan one."
Conducting The Bell and the Candle is also delicious!