‘Either,’ I said, ’will be an improvement on the present regime, of crocky imbeciles.’

We would talk like that, of things in general, in the old way.  Jane, indeed, would have moods in which she would talk continuously, and I would suddenly think, watching her, ’You’re trying to hide from something—­to talk it down.’

4

And then one evening Arthur and she met at my flat.  Jane had been having supper with me, and Arthur dropped in.

Jane said, ‘Hallo, Arthur,’ and Arthur said, ‘Oh, hallo,’ and I saw plainly that the last person either had wanted to meet was the other.

Arthur didn’t stay at all.  He said he had come to speak to me about a review he wanted me to do.  It wasn’t necessary that he should speak to me about it at all; he had already sent me the book, and I hadn’t yet read it, and it was on a subject he knew nothing at all about, and there was nothing whatever to say.  However, he succeeded in saying something, then went away.

Jane had hardly spoken to him or looked at him.  She was reading an evening paper.

She put it down when he had gone.

‘Does Arthur come in often?’ she asked me casually, lighting another cigarette.

‘No.  Sometimes.’

After a minute or two, Jane said, ’Look here, K, I’ll tell you something.  I’m not particularly keen on meeting Arthur for the present.  Nor he me.’

‘That’s not exactly news, my dear.’

’No; it fairly stuck out just now, didn’t it?  Well, the fact is, we both want a little time to collect ourselves, to settle how we stand....  Sudden deaths are a bad jar, K. They break things up....  Arthur and I were more friends than Oliver liked, you know.  He didn’t like Arthur, and didn’t like my going about with him....  Oh, well, you know all that as well as I do, of course....  And now he’s dead....  It seems to spoil things a bit....  I hate meeting Arthur now.’

And then an extraordinary thing happened.  Jane, whom I had never seen cry, broke down quite suddenly and cried.  Of course it would have seemed quite natural in most people, but tears are as surprising in Jane as they would be in me.  They aren’t part of her equipment.  However, she was out of health just now, of course, and had had a bad shock, and was emotionally overwrought; and, anyhow, she cried.

I mixed her some sal volatile, which, I understand, is done in these crises.  She drank it, and stopped crying soon.

‘Sorry to be such an ass,’ she said, more in her normal tone.  ’It’s this beastly baby, I suppose....  Well, look here, K, you see what I mean.  Arthur and I don’t want to meet just now.  If he’s likely to come in much, I must give up coming, that’s all.’

‘I’ll tell him,’ I said, ’that you’re often here.  If he doesn’t want to meet you either, that ought to settle it.’

‘Thanks, old thing, will you?’

Jane was the perfect egotist.  If it ever occurred to her that possibly Arthur would like to see me sometimes, and I him, she would not think it mattered.  She wanted to come to my flat, and she didn’t want to meet Arthur; therefore Arthur mustn’t come.  Life’s little difficulties are very simply arranged by the Potter twins.