“Well,” said Jimmy, “how do you like them?”

“Oh—­they’re dears,” said Viola, “especially the one with the moustache.  Do you know, they’ve told me everything except what’s the matter with leg.”

“My leg?” said Jimmy.  “A bit of shell barked it.  I’m jolly glad it’s my leg and not my hand.”

I was a little frightened when Viola left us alone after dinner.  I thought he would pitch into me for bringing her.  But he only said sadly, “You oughtn’t to have brought her, Furny.  But I suppose you couldn’t stop her.”

I said, No, I couldn’t stop her.  But I hadn’t brought her.  She had brought me.

We sat on till the lounge was open to the guests of the hotel.  And when the war-correspondents began to drop in I saw that Jevons was uneasy.

“D’you mind if I turn in, old man?” he said.

I asked him if his wound was hurting him.

He stooped and caressed it pensively.

“No,” he said.  “Not a bit.  I like my wound.  It—­it makes me feel manly.”

Presently he said good night and left me.

I thought—­yes, I certainly thought—­that he exaggerated his limp a little as he crossed the room, and for a moment I wondered, “Is he playing up to the correspondents?”

Then I saw that Viola stood in the doorway waiting for him and that she gave him her arm.

And then through the glass screen I saw them going together up the stair.  And I remembered the tale that he had told me nine years ago, how he had seen her standing there and looking down at him—­half frightened—­through the glass screen, and how he had said to me, “I couldn’t.  She was so helpless somehow—­and so pretty—­that for the life of me I couldn’t.”

It was the same room and the same glass screen and the same stair.  And it was the same man.  I knew him.  I knew him.  I had always known him. (Was there ever any risk he hadn’t taken?) I had never, really, for one moment misunderstood.

I certainly knew why he “liked” his wound.

XIV

We had breakfast very early the next morning, for Jevons was under orders to start at eight o’clock for Termonde.  We had a table reserved for us in a corner of the restaurant.  The hotel was full of Belgian officers, and I found I was infinitely better off in attaching myself to Jevons than if I had joined the war-correspondents.

Viola (I may say that her rig-out which Jevons had admired so much, the khaki tunic and breeches, made us terribly conspicuous) had come down in a contrite mood.  I heard her telling Jevons that he must be kind to me, for I had had an awful time with her and I had been an angel.

Well, I had had an awful time; I don’t think I remember ever having had a worse time than the hours I had spent in her company since she had laid into me on Tuesday evening.

But I had not been an angel; far from it.  Looking back on those hours, I can see that I behaved to her like a perfect brute.