I said I had.

“Then,” she said, “let’s sit in the garden.”

I took her hat off a chair and stuck it on a bust on the bureau (Viola laughed).  I set the chair on the flagged path of the garden.

“Have you had coffee?” she said then.

I had.

“So have I. But I haven’t had it in the garden.  We’ll have some more.”

I rang for coffee.

We sat down and faced each other.  She was smiling again as if the delight of seeing me fairly bubbled out of her.  One thing struck me then, that at this rate it would be easy enough to ignore Jevons.  In fact, if Jevons hadn’t given Viola away just now I should have thought that she was travelling in Belgium on her own account and that his being here in the same town with her was a coincidence, an accident.  I could have got over Withers and his story.

Then she said, “Have you come across Mr. Jevons yet?  He’s here.”

I answered, with what I knew to be a very stiff mouth, “We’re staying in the same hotel.”

“You might have brought him along with you,” she said.

I said I didn’t want to bring him along with me.

She raised her eyebrows in delicate reproof of my rudeness and said, “Why not?”

“Because,” I said, “I want to talk to you.”

“Oh—­” I don’t think I imagined the faint embarrassment in her tone.  But it was very faint.

“And” I went on, “I don’t want to talk about Jevons.”

She looked at me then steadily.  The look held me, then defied me to pass beyond a certain limit.  I understood now the terms of our encounter.  As long as I met her on the ground of a friendship that recognized and included Jevons she was glad to treat with me; but any attitude that repudiated Jevons, or merely ignored him, was a hostile attitude that she was prepared to resent.

“What has he done?” she said.

“I don’t know what he’s done.”  I paused.  “Why drag in Jevons?”

“Because,” she said, “it’s his last night.  He’s going to-morrow.”

I said, “And it’s my first night.  And as it happens he isn’t going to-morrow.  He’s arranged to stay here another fortnight.”

Her face softened.  “Then it’s all right,” she said.

I had to dash her down from that ground and I did it at once.

I said, “I saw your brother the other day.”

I could see her face darken then with a flush of pain.  We were sitting close to the window, and the light from the room inside showed me all the changes of her face.

She asked, “What day?”

“Let me see.  This is Friday.  It must have been Monday.  I came over that night, as soon as I’d seen him.”

“What did you go and see him for?”

“I didn’t go.  He came to see me.”

She looked at me again, if possible, more steadily than before, but without defiance.  It was as if she were measuring the extent of my loyalty before she committed herself again to speech.