Linforth saw his companion coming towards him from the restaurant.  He held out his hand.

“I have got to go,” he said.

“I too,” replied Violet.  But she detained him.  “I want to tell you,” she said hurriedly.  “Long ago—­in Peshawur—­do you remember?  I told you there was someone else—­a better mate for you than I was.  I meant it, Dick, but you wouldn’t listen.  There is still the someone else.  I am going to tell you her name.  She has never said a word to me—­but—­but I am sure.  It may sound mean of me to give her away—­but I am not really doing that.  I should be very happy, Dick, if it were possible.  It’s Phyllis Casson.  She has never married.  She is living with her father at Camberley.”  And before he could answer she had hurried away.

But Linforth was to see her again that night.  For when he had taken his seat in the stalls of the theatre he saw her and her husband in a box.  He gathered from the remarks of those about him that her jewels were a regular feature upon the first nights of new plays.  He looked at her now and then during the intervals of the acts.  A few people entered her box and spoke to her for a little while.  Linforth conjectured that she had dropped a little out of the world in which he had known her.  Yet she was contented.  On the whole that seemed certain.  She was satisfied with her life.  To attend the first productions of plays, to sit in the restaurants, to hear her jewels remarked upon—­her life had narrowed sleekly down to that, and she was content.  But there had been other possibilities for Violet Oliver.

Linforth walked back from the theatre to his club.  He looked into a room and saw an old gentleman dozing alone amongst his newspapers.

“I suppose I shall come to that,” he said grimly.  “It doesn’t look over cheerful as a way of spending the evening of one’s days,” and he was suddenly seized with the temptation to go home and take the first train in the morning for Camberley.  He turned the plan over in his mind for a moment, and then swung away from it in self-disgust.  He retained a general reverence for women, and to seek marriage without bringing love to light him in the search was not within his capacity.

“That wouldn’t be fair,” he said to himself—­“even if Violet’s tale were true.”  For with his reverence he had retained his modesty.  The next morning he took the train into Sussex instead, and was welcomed by Sybil Linforth to the house under the Downs.  In the warmth of that welcome, at all events, there was nothing that was just not.