“What did you do it for, Viola?”

“Wally, I asked myself that as soon as I got into the train.  And it wasn’t till I was half across the Channel that I knew why.”

She stopped and stared as if at the wonder of herself explained.

“I did it to burn my boats.”

I suppose I stared at that.  For she expounded: 

“To make it impossible to go back.”

I said, “My dear child, that was very reckless of you.”

She said she wanted to be reckless.  I asked her if it didn’t occur to her that some day she might want her boats?

She said:  No.  It was just her boats that she was afraid of.  She didn’t really want them.  She didn’t want—­really—­to go back.

Then she looked at me and said, “You know Jimmy wants to marry me.”  And then, “Did you know?”

I said I was not in Jevons’s confidence, but I had guessed as much.  I said, “Do you want to marry him?”

She said, “Yes.  I want to marry him more than anything.  I don’t want to marry anybody else.  I never shall marry anybody else.  Most of me wants to marry Jimmy.  But there’s a little bit of me that doesn’t.  It’s mean and snobbish—­and dreadful, and it’s afraid to marry him.  And, you see, if I were to go to my people and say, ’I’m not going to marry Mr. Furnival; I’m going to marry Mr. Jevons,’ and I were to show Jimmy to them, they’d all get up and side with that horrid and shameful little bit of me.  Reggie would, too.  It wouldn’t be in the least horrid or snobbish of them, you know, because they wouldn’t know what Jimmy’s really like.  They’re just very fastidious and correct.  But it’s simply awful of me, because I do know.”

“It isn’t awful.  It simply means that he isn’t your sort. You’re fastidious and correct.  You can’t marry him, and you know it.  You won’t be able to bear it.  He’ll make you shudder all down your spine.”

“All that doesn’t prevent my caring for him.  I care for him more than for anything on earth, even Reggie.  That’s why I’ve burned my boats.  So that I may have what I care for without their tearing me to pieces over it.”

So far was I from understanding her that it struck me that what she was telling me was as ugly a thing as could be told in words; that she was confessing that, being too weak to stand up against her family, she had deliberately compromised herself with Jevons so that she might marry him without their opposition; just as I was sure that Jevons had compromised her so that he could marry her without opposition from herself.

“But—­what you are saying is horrible,” I said.  “I don’t believe you know how horrible it is.”

So far was she from understanding me that she answered:  “Yes, it is horrible.  But it was only a little bit of me.  And it’s all over.  Burned away, Wally.  I burned it when I burned my boats.  Don’t think of me as if I were really like that.”