He had evidently been trying to pack.

“And what,” I asked, “is Miss Thesiger doing?”

“She’s staying on here by herself a bit.  In the pension.  As if she’d come by herself.”

He seemed entirely satisfied with his plan.

I said, “Look here, Jevons, that won’t do.  It’s no good your going.  You’ve been seen here.  You’re supposed to be staying in this hotel together.  If you go and she stays—­in that pension—­you’ve deserted her.  You’ve seduced her.  You’re tired of her—­in five days—­and you’ve left her.”

“You don’t suppose I have really?” said Jevons.

“I don’t suppose anything.  I don’t know what you’ve done.  I don’t think I want to know.  That’s what it’ll look like.  Do, for God’s sake, remember you’ve been seen.”

He gathered a portion of his cheek into his mouth and sucked it.

“I suppose,” he said, “it would look like that.”

I said of course it would.  And he asked me then, quite humbly, what I thought he’d better do.

I said I thought he’d better do exactly what I told him.  He was to stay here till Captain Thesiger had sailed for India (I wasn’t going to let him get back to England till Reggie was out of it).  Miss Thesiger was to go back to her people to-morrow, and he was not to see her or write to her before she went.

He asked me was I thinking of taking her back myself?

I said I wasn’t.  Miss Thesiger had behaved as if she had disappeared. 
There was no good in my behaving as if she had disappeared with me.

That seemed to pacify him.

I said I should take her to Ostend to-morrow and put her on board the boat.  I could see that he didn’t at all care about this part of the programme, but his intelligence accepted the whole as the best thing that could be done in the circumstances.

Then I left him to his misery and went round to the pension to see
Viola.

All my instincts revolted against what I had to do.

* * * * *

She has since told me that I did it beautifully.  I don’t, of course, believe her, and it doesn’t matter.  The wonder is how I did it at all.

To begin with I was afraid of seeing her, because I conceived that she would be afraid of seeing me.  I felt as if I had hunted her down and caught her in a trap.  I didn’t want the bright, defiant creature to crouch and flinch before me in her corner.  And, as I tried to realize our encounter, that was how I saw her—­crouching and flinching in a corner.  It wouldn’t have been quite so awful if the man had been any other man but Jevons.  I could not imagine a worse position for a girl like Viola Thesiger than to be caught running off to Belgium, or anywhere, with Jevons, and told to leave him and go home.  Put brutally, that was what I had to tell her.

The only way to do it was to ignore the unspeakable element in the affair—­to ignore Jevons.  To behave as if I’d never heard of him; as if she were just travelling in Belgium on her own account and staying in Bruges alone.