There was nothing ineffectual about Reggie Thesiger.  I suppose he would have been impressive anyway from the sheer height and breadth of him, his visible and palpable perfection; but what “had” me was not his perfection, but the odd likeness to his sister which he combined, and in some mysterious way reconciled, with it.  His face had taken over not only the dominant and defiant look of hers, exaggerated by his sheer virility; but it had the very tricks of her charm, even to the uptilted lines of her mouth; his little black moustache followed and gave accent to them.  I said to myself:  “Here is a young man who will not stand any nonsense.”

He greeted me with a joy that I could not account for all at once in an entire stranger, and it was mixed with a childlike and candid surprise.  I wondered what I had done that he should be so glad to see me.

His manner very soon left me in no doubt as to what I had done.  I had brought the most intense relief to the Captain’s innocent mind.  I do not know by what subtle shades he managed to convey to me that, compared with the queer chap I so easily might have been, he found me distinctly agreeable.  It was obvious that I existed for him only as the chap, the strange and legendary chap, that Viola had taken up with, and that in this capacity he, to his own amazement, approved of me.  I gathered that, knowing his sister, he had feared the worst, and that the blessed relief of it was more than he could bear if he didn’t let himself go a bit.

He had quite evidently come, or had been sent, to see what Viola was up to.  Possibly he may have had in his mind the extraordinary treatment I had received from his father, and he may have been anxious to atone.

Any relief that I might have brought to Captain Thesiger was surpassed by the reassurance that I took from my first sight of him.  It was as if I had instantly argued to myself:  “This is the sort of thing that has produced Viola.  This is the sort of man she has been brought up with.  When Viola thinks of men it is this sort of man she is thinking of.  It is therefore inconceivable that Tasker Jevons should exist for her otherwise than as a curious intellectual freak.  Even her perversity couldn’t—­no, it could not—­fall so far from this familiar perfection.”  Though Captain Thesiger’s perfection might not help me personally, it did dispose of little Jevons.  Looking at him, I felt as if my uneasiness, you may say my jealousy, of Jevons (it almost amounted to that) had been an abominable insult to his sister.

Reggie—­he is my brother-in-law now, and I cannot go on calling him Captain Thesiger—­Reggie was good enough to say that he had heard of me from his sister.  His voice conveyed, without any vulgar implication, an acknowledgment of my right to be heard of from her—­but, of course, he went on agreeably, he had heard of me in any case; he supposed everybody had.  My celebrity was so immature that I should not have recognized this allusion to it if Reggie had not gone on even more genially.  He said he liked awfully the things I did in the Morning Standard.  Most especially and enthusiastically he liked my account of the big boxing match at Olympia.  You could see it was written by a chap who knew what he was talking about.