When at last he went, he held my hand and wrung it so that it hurt; this was unusual, too, because we never do shake hands, we meet much too often.

I thought it over and couldn’t quite understand it all.  It even occurred to me that it was a little Potterish of Arthur to make a conventional tragic situation out of what he couldn’t really mind very much, and to make out that Jane was overwhelmed by what, I believed, didn’t really overwhelm her.  But that didn’t do.  Arthur was never Potterish.  There must, therefore, be more to this than I understood.

Unless, of course, it was merely that Arthur was afraid of the effects of the shock and so on, on Jane’s health, because she had a baby coming.  But somehow that didn’t really meet the situation.  I remembered Arthur’s voice when he said, ’There’s more to it than you know....  It is a mess.  A ghastly mess.’

And another rather queer thing I remembered was that, all through the evening, he hadn’t once met my eyes.  An odd thing in Arthur, for he has a habit of looking at the people he is talking to very straight and hard, as if to hold their minds to his by his eyes.

Well, I supposed that in about a year those two would marry, anyhow.  And then they would talk, and talk, and talk....  And Arthur would look at Jane not only because he was talking to her, but because he liked to look at her....  They would be all right then, so why should I bother?

3

I went to see Jane, but found Lady Pinkerton in possession.  I saw Jane for five minutes alone.  She was much as I had expected, calm and rather silent.  I asked her to come round to the flat any evening she could.  She came next week, and after that got into the way of dropping in pretty often, both in the evenings, when I was at home, and during the day, when I was at the laboratory.  She said, ’You see, old thing, mother has got it into her head that I need company.  The only way I can get out of it is to say I shall be here....  Mother’s rather much just now.  She’s got the Other Side on the brain, and is trying to put me in touch with it.  She reads me books called Letters from the Other Side, and Hands Across the Grave, and so on.  And she talks ...’

Jane pushed back her hair from her forehead and leant her head on her hand.

‘In what mother calls “my condition,"’ she went on, ’I don’t think I ought to be worried, do you?  I wish baby would come at once, so that I shouldn’t be in a condition any more....  I’m really awfully fond of baby, but I shall get to hate it if I’m reminded of it much more....  What a rotten system it is, K. Why haven’t we evolved a better one, all these centuries?’

I couldn’t imagine why, except for the general principle that as the mental equipment of the human race improves, its physical qualities apparently deteriorate.

‘And where will that land us in the end?’ Jane speculated.  ’Shall we be a race of clever crocks, or shall we give up civilisation and education and be robust imbeciles?’