He looked round him with his disenchanted eyes.

“I can see it’s all wrong, this sort of thing.  It’s in bad taste.  Rotten bad taste.  I suppose I must have been a bit excited about it at the time—­I must have thought it was all right or I couldn’t have stood it.

“It’s a phase I’ve gone through.

“I can understand perfectly well how she feels about it.

“Fact is, I hate the place myself—­the whole beastly house I hate.  I’ve hated it ever since she was ill in it.  I can’t get away from her illness.  I shall always see her ill.  She’ll be ill again if we go on living in it.

“I’m tired of the whole business—­I’ll let it to-morrow and take a house in the country.

“You might go upstairs, old man, and see what she’s doing.”

I went upstairs.

She was sitting in one corner of the study with a book in her hand pretending to read.  Norah was sitting in another corner with a book in her hand, pretending to read.  I gathered that Norah had been talking to her sister.  I took up a book and pretended to read too.

Presently, when she thought we were absorbed, Viola got up and left us.  Norah waited till the door had closed on her.  Then she spoke.

“Wally—­it’s more awful than we’ve ever imagined.  I don’t think she’ll be able to stand it much longer.”

“Well,” I said, “she won’t have to stand it much longer.  He’s going to chuck the place.  It’s got on his nerves, too.  He understands exactly how she feels about it.”

“Let’s hope he doesn’t understand how she feels about—­It isn’t the place, Wally.”

“What is it, then?”

“I’m most awfully afraid it’s Jimmy.”

“Jimmy?  You don’t mean she doesn’t care about him?”

“Oh, no, she cares about him, and it’s because she cares so that she can’t stand him.”

“Well,” I said, “whether she cares or not, it’s rough on Jimmy.”

“It’s rough on her.  It’s rough on both of them.  It’s getting rougher and rougher, and it’s wearing her out.”

“Won’t it wear him out too?”

“N-no.  Nothing will wear Jimmy out.  He’s indestructible.  He’ll wear her out.”

“He says he’s going to take a house in the country.  How do you think that’ll answer?”

She shook her head.

“I don’t know, Walter.  I don’t really know.  It sounds risky.”

“The whole thing,” I said, “was risky from the start.”

“There are two things,” she said, “that would save them—­if Reggie were to come round.  Or if Jimmy were to have an illness; and neither of them is in the least likely to happen.”

“There’s a third thing,” I said—­“if Viola were to have a baby.”

“That isn’t likely either.  He’d never let her.  He says it would kill her.  It’s pitiful, it’s pitiful.  Can’t you see,” she said, “that he adores her?”

I said I didn’t see what we were there for, and that it was time for us to go.