I ought to have felt it.  For we were precious soon in the thick of it—­of his most passionate affair.

I had dined him, I suppose, about three times, and I had lunched him twice.  And I had had tea with him once in his bedroom.  He was living in one room in a street off the Euston Road, and he called it his bedroom because it looked so much more that than anything else.  I might have let it go at that.  But I didn’t.  I had seen his bedroom.  I took the liberty of inquiring into his finances.  They were, he said, as yet undeveloped.  He had a scheme of his own for improving them, but while it was maturing he was, he certainly was open to offers of work.  I got him some translation. (He was a fairly good French scholar.)

Then—­it was the fatality of the proceedings that impressed them on my memory—­then (I forgot to say that at that time I was reader to a firm of publishers; these things are in themselves so inessential to this story) I turned over to him any books that came more into his province than mine.  His province, I can tell you, was pretty extensive, too.

He began by doing me the honour to consult me about any instances that seemed doubtful.

And so—­you see how carefully I had prepared his path for him—­one afternoon he turned up at my rooms, uninvited, between four and five.  He said he remembered I had told him I should be free at that hour.

He remembered.  Yes; I don’t think Tasker Jevons ever forgot anything, anything likely to be useful to him, in his life.

And he hadn’t been with me ten minutes before Viola Thesiger came in.

He was saying, “Why the Heaven-afflicted idiot” (his author) “should think it necessary—­” when Viola came in.

She came in, and suddenly I made up my mind that she was beautiful.  I hadn’t seen it before.  I don’t know why I saw it now.  It may have been some turn of her small, squarish head that surprised me with subtle tendernesses and curves; or more likely it may have been her effect on him.  I may have seen her with his eyes.  I don’t know—­I don’t know.  I hardly like to think he saw anything in her I hadn’t seen first.

He stopped talking.  They looked at each other.  I introduced him.  Not to have introduced him would have struck him as a slight.

I ordered tea at once in the hope of hastening his departure.  He had been curiously silent since she had come in.

But he didn’t go.  He just sat there, saying nothing, but looking at her furtively now and again, and blinking, as if looking at her hurt him.  Whenever she said anything he stared, with his mouth a little open, breathing heavily.

She hadn’t paid very much attention to him.  Then, suddenly, as if intrigued by his silence, she said: 

“Who is the Heaven-afflicted idiot?”

I said, “Ask Mr. Jevons.”

She did.

Jevons didn’t answer her.  He simply looked at her and blinked.  Then he looked away again.