“Well—­I am blowed,” said Jevons.

Norah put her hand on his arm.

“You were wonderful, Jimmy dear,” she said.  “I could have listened to you for ever.  So could Walter.  But then, we haven’t any nerves.”

“After all,” said Jimmy, “what did I do?”

I said, “You made a most infernal noise, old chap, you know.”

“I say! Come—­”

We had heard the andirons go down with a clatter.

That was how we knew she was in the Tudor hall.

He found her there when he trotted out and took her some wine and a peach.  He came back almost instantly.

“It’s all right,” he said.  “She’s eating it.”

But it was very far from all right.

All the prisoned storms and the secret agonies of years were loose that night, and they had their way with her.

We found her dreadfully calm when we got back to her.  She had peeled her peach and eaten it, and she had drunk her wine, and she was sitting by the great hearth where she had kicked down the andirons; she was sitting, I remember, on one of the Tudor chairs with the carved backs and the tapestry—­the lilies of France in gold on a crimson ground—­sitting very upright, in her beautiful trailing gown that curled round her feet; and she was a little flushed (but that may have been the wine).

Jimmy went and stood next her in front of his hearth, with his hands in his trouser pockets—­I mean with his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, where he seemed to have put them to keep them out of mischief; and he twinkled as if he were still thinking of the andirons.  And every now and then he glanced at his wife sideways out of his brilliant sapphire eyes, without moving his head a hair’s-breadth.

And none of us said anything.

Then Jimmy rang for coffee, and that started her.

She said, “Are you going to do any work to-night?”

“No,” said Jimmy, “I don’t think so.  Why?”

“Because, if you don’t want your study I’ll sit in it.”

“All right.”  He said it vaguely.  But he must have suspected something was up, for he turned his head round and looked at her straight; and again he said, “Why?”

“Because,” she said, “it’s the only tolerable room in the house.”

He flushed faintly at this.  “You mean,” he said, “it’s the only one I didn’t bother about?”

“I said it was the only tolerable one.”

“I see.”  His flush went deep, and his mouth closed over his teeth.

There was no doubt he saw.

She had hurt him badly.  It was quite a minute before he spoke again, and when he did speak you felt that he had yielded, in spite of himself, to an overpowering curiosity.  He must—­he seemed to be saying to himself—­sift this mystery to the bottom.

“D’you mean,” he said, “that this room doesn’t—­er—­appeal to you?  What’s wrong with it?”