Viola smiled a reminiscent smile.  “If you must know,” she said, “what happened was that Charlie was in that train, too—­he came bursting out on to the platform at Selham, awfully pleased with himself, because he’d picked my luggage up at Midhurst and bagged a corner seat for me, and made faces at people to keep them out.”

“Did you know he was going up to town?” I said.

“No, of course I didn’t.  He didn’t know it himself.  There was no reason why he shouldn’t go.  And you’d have thought there was no reason why we shouldn’t go together.  He was all right till we got to Petworth.  But after that he lost his head and made such an ass of himself that I had to get out here and make him go on by himself.  Silly idiot!”

We were sitting in the heather, one on each side of her, and I saw my wife slip her arm into hers and hug it to her.

“Did you know,” she said, “that Charlie’d gone?”

We didn’t answer.  We simply couldn’t.

And then Viola said, “Poor little Norah!”

And she told her to run away for ten minutes while she talked to me.

“Why poor little Norah?” I asked when we were alone.

“Because,” she said, “you frightened her.”

“I?  Frightened her?”

“Yes,” she said.  “You made her think I was going to run away with Charlie.  There’s no good trying to look as if you didn’t.  You’re quite awful, Furny, in the things you think.  You can’t help it, I know.  You’re so good, so shockingly good, and you can’t bear other people to be naughty.  You thought I’d run away to Belgium with Jimmy and you came rushing after me and fetched me back.  You thought I’d run away with Charlie and you came rushing—­in your dreadful rectitude, and in Jimmy’s motor-car that he won’t let anybody look at.  You’ll have an awful time with Jimmy when you get back.  It’s going to rain, and there’ll be mud on the car, and he’ll dance with rage when he sees it.  And he won’t think it’s any excuse if you tell him you thought I was running away with Charlie, and you took the car to fetch me back; he’ll say you’d no business to think it and in any case you’d no business to take the car out.  And poor Kendal will be sacked.

“That’s all you’ve done,” she said, “by your fussy interference.”

She went on.  “It wouldn’t matter what you think about me—­but it was beastly of you to go and make Norah think it.”

I said I didn’t suppose either of us thought anything, except that since she was going up to town with the idea of leaving her husband, it was not desirable that she should go up with Charlie Thesiger.

“Who could possibly have supposed,” she said, “that Charlie would be such an ass?”

I said I for one could.

“Oh, you—­haven’t I told you you’re always supposing things?”

“Surely?” I said, “you must have seen—­yourself—­”

She smiled.  “My dear—­I couldn’t see anything but poor Jimmy.”