When I had finished the tale—­and I let her have the whole of it, from the first shell that hit the Town Hall to the bit of the third shell that hit Jimmy—­she said, “You mean that if he hadn’t gone back for his car—­” She had broken down and was sobbing quietly, but you could see how her mind worked.

I said, “I mean that if he hadn’t gone back to the Town Hall to look for Reggie he wouldn’t have been hit.”

Then I told her how they took Jimmy’s hand off.

I heard the Canon groan.  Millicent and Victoria began to sob as their mother had sobbed.  Mildred set her teeth firmly; and Mrs. Thesiger turned to me a queer, disordered face, and spoke.

“They—­they gave the anaesthetic to—­Reggie?”

“They did,” I said.  “Because Jimmy made them.”

Yes.  I am very sorry for Mrs. Thesiger.

She cried, softly, and with a great recovery of beauty and dignity, for about fifteen seconds (the Canon had gone back to Jevons); then she rose and addressed her daughter.

“Mildred dear, I think Jimmy had better have Reggie’s room.”

Then she went to him; and I am told that she kissed him for the first time.  She kissed him as if he had been her son. (Poor Jimmy, I may say, was so tired that he didn’t want to be kissed by anybody.)

* * * * *

He still had Reggie’s room six weeks later when I came back from France for a week-end.  Reggie had recovered, and was with them for a fortnight’s leave before he went out again.

Norah and I went down on Saturday to see him. (His leave was up on Sunday night.)

Without Reggie I don’t think I should have realized Jevons in his final phase.

He had been happy, I know, at Hampstead in the first two years of his marriage; he had been happy most of the time in Edwardes Square; even in Mayfair he had had moments; and Amershott had been, on the whole, an improvement on Mayfair.  And he had lived through his three weeks in Ghent in a sort of ecstasy.  And before that, all the time, there had been his work, which I am always forgetting, and his fame, when he didn’t forget it.

But there had always been something.

At first it had been the Thesigers.  As long as Mrs. Thesiger—­as long as one Thesiger—­held out against him he had felt defeat.  And then there had been Reggie’s return and his appalling doubt.  He had pretended not to see his doubt and not to mind it.  And he had seen it, as he saw everything, and he had minded awfully.  Then came Viola’s illness, which you could put down to Reggie’s doubt.  And after that it had been Viola pretty nearly all the time.  And even at Ghent, by the tortures of anxiety she had caused him, you may say that she had spoiled his ecstasy.

And now, without any effort, or any calculation or foresight, by a stupendous accident, he had found happiness and peace and certainty.  The thing was so consummately done, and so timed to the minute, that when you saw him there enjoying it, you could have sworn that he had played for it and pulled it off.  It was as if he had said to himself, “Give me time, and I’ll bring all these people round, even Mrs. Thesiger, even Reggie.  I’ll make them love me.  Wait, and you’ll just see how I shall score.”