He’d be writing plays.

All this he told me, sitting in an arm-chair in my rooms, with his feet up on another chair, and smiling, smiling with one side of his mouth while with the other he smoked innumerable cigarettes.  I can see his blue eyes twinkle still, through the cigarette smoke that obscured him.  That night he had got down to solid business.

It was quite clear that Jevons’s business was the business of the speculator who loves the excitement of the risks he takes.  I remember exhorting him to prudence.  I said:  “This isn’t art, it’s speculation.  You’re taking considerable risks, my friend.”

He took his cigarette out of his mouth, dispersed the smoke, and looked at me very straight and without a twinkle.

“I’ve got to make money,” he said, “and to make it soon.  I should be taking worse risks if I didn’t.”

It’s marvellous how he has pulled it off.  Just as he said, dates and all.  For he named the dates for each stage of his advance.

That was in March; about a week before Easter, nineteen-six.

* * * * *

The next day I went up to Hampstead towards teatime, to see how Viola was getting on.  I didn’t expect to see Jevons there, for he’d left.  He told me in a burst of confidence he’d had to.  He couldn’t stand it.  It was getting too risky.  He was living now in rooms in Bernard Street, not far from mine.

At Hampstead I was told that Miss Thesiger was out.  She had gone for a walk on the Heath with Mr. Jevons, but they were coming in at half-past four for tea.  If I’d step upstairs into the sitting-room I’d find her brother, Captain Thesiger, waiting there.

I stepped upstairs and found Captain Thesiger.  I was glad to find him, for I don’t mind owning that by this time I was getting somewhat uneasy about Viola.

It was all very well for Viola to nurse Jevons through his jaundice, she might have done that out of pure humanity; but she had no business to be going for walks with the little bounder.  Even the charm of his conversation and his personality (and it had a charm) couldn’t conceal the fact that he was a little bounder.  Why, in moments of excitement he had gestures that must have made her shudder all down her spine, and more than once I have known his aitches become fugitive, though, on the whole, I must say he was pretty careful.  And Viola was letting herself in for him.  In sheer innocence and recklessness she was letting herself in.  I felt that if ever it should come to getting her out I would be glad of an ally.  Now that I saw what Viola was capable of, I began to feel some sympathy with her people at Canterbury who had tried so ineffectually to hold her in.