‘Makes it awkward,’ I repeated.  ’How does it make it awkward?  Whom does it make awkward?  It doesn’t make Jane awkward.  Nor me, nor any one else, as far as I know.  Does it make you awkward?  I didn’t know anything could do that.  But something obviously has, this evening.  It’s not Jane, though; it’s being afraid to say what you mean.  You’d better spit it out, Jukie.  You’re not enough of a Jesuit to handle these jobs competently, you know.  I know perfectly well what you’ve got on your mind.  You think Jane and I are getting too intimate with each other.  You think we’re falling, or fallen, or about to fall, in love.’

‘Well,’ he wheeled round on me, relieved that I had said it, ’I do.  And you can’t deny it....  Any fool could see it by now.  Why, the way you mooned about, depressed and sulky, this last month, when she’s been out of town, and woke up the moment she came back, was enough to tell any one.’

‘I dare say,’ I said indifferently.  ’People’s minds are usually offensively open to that particular information.  If you’ll define being in love, I’ll tell you whether I’m in love with Jane....  I’m interested in Jane; I find her attractive, if you like, extraordinarily attractive, though I don’t admire her character, and she’s not beautiful.  I like to be with her and to talk to her.  On the other hand, I’ve not the least intention of asking her to elope with me.  Nor would she if I did.  Well?’

‘You’re in love,’ Juke repeated.  ’You mayn’t know it, but you are.  And you’ll get deeper in every day, if you don’t pull up.  And then before you know where you are, there’ll be the most ghastly mess.’

’Don’t trouble yourself, Jukie.  There won’t be a mess.  Jane doesn’t like messes.  And I’m not quite a fool.  Don’t imagine melodrama....  I claim the right to be intimate with Jane—­well, if you like, to be a little in love with Jane—­and yet to keep my head and not play the fool.  Why should men and women lose their attraction for each other just because they marry and promise loyalty to some one person?  They can keep that compact and yet not shut themselves away from other men and other women.  They must have friends.  Life can’t be an eternal duet....  And here you come, using that cant Potterish phrase, “in love,” as if love was the sea, or something definite that you must be in or out of and always know which.’

‘The sea—­yes,’ Juke took me up.  ’It’s like the sea; it advances and advances, and you can’t stand there and stop it, say “Thus far and no farther” to it.  All you can do is to turn your back upon it and walk away in time.’

’Well, I’m not going to walk away.  There’s nothing to walk away from.  I’ve no intention of behaving in a dishonourable way, and I claim the right to be friends with Jane.  So that’s that.’

I was angry with Juke.  He was taking the prudish, conventional point of view.  I had never yet been the victim of passion; love between men and women had always rather bored me; it is such a hot, stupid, muddling thing, ail emotion and no thought.  Dull, I had always thought it; one of those impulses arranged by nature for her own purposes, but not in the least interesting to the civilised thinking being.  Juke had no right to speak as if I were an amorous fool, liable to be bowled over against my better judgment.