And then you had to reckon with Mrs. Jevons’s rejections.  She was as fastidious in her way as he was in his; and besides, she guarded him, so that the circle around him was rather tight and small.

Oh, he was faithful; he kept me in it; he gave me of his best; and if he could have made me shine I should have blazed among them all.

It doesn’t matter now which of them I met there.  Jevons was charming to them all.  He set them blazing.  I don’t think he cared much whether he blazed or not, but if he felt like it he could make a bigger blaze than any of them.  He enjoyed them; he enjoyed them vastly, violently.  Having once acquired the taste, he couldn’t have lived without the intellectual excitement they gave him.  But except for that, for the stimulus, the release of energy, it’s surprising how little they really counted for him.

And so it’s not those evenings and that brilliance that I remember.

In the house in Edwardes Square I seem to have been always meeting Norah Thesiger.  Now that they had a room to put her in, she would be there for months at a time.  And whenever she was there they would be sure to ask me.  If Jevons didn’t, Viola did.

There was that summer, too, when Norah and Mildred came together with Charlie Thesiger, their cousin, who was engaged to Mildred.  Charlie was then a lieutenant in the South Kent Hussars.  He was a large young man, correct, handsome, rather supercilious and rather stupid.  He seemed to fill the house in Edwardes Square when he was in it.

He doesn’t matter.  At least, he didn’t matter then.  God knows he never really mattered, poor boy, at any time.  But he is important.  He fixes things for me.  He brings me to the incident of June, nineteen-nine.

It was a very slight incident.  It wouldn’t be worth recording except that it stood for others like itself, a whole crowd.  And it was of such slight things that Viola’s torments were to be made.

We were at dinner in the little dining-room looking on the flagged court, a party of six:  Viola at the head of the round table, with her back to the light; Jevons at the foot, facing her, with the light full on him; Charlie Thesiger was on Viola’s right, I was on her left, facing him.  Norah sat next to me on Jevons’s right, and Mildred sat next to Charlie on Jevons’s left, facing Norah.  We were all so close together that it would be difficult for one of us to have missed anything that happened or was said.  And Viola, with the light behind her, commanded us all.

She had been very gay.  I don’t suppose Charlie felt anything strained about her gaiety—­he was not observant—­but I did, and I put it down to Charlie’s presence, to the rather flat correctness that made Jevons stand out.  Another thing I noticed was that, in labouring for refinement in his surroundings, Jevons hadn’t allowed for the effect of contrast.  It hadn’t occurred to him that an interior that harmonized with Viola would be damaging to him.  And it was.  Just how damaging I hadn’t realized until to-night (which shows how careful he must have been at Canterbury).  He didn’t stand out.  He burst out.  He never sank into his background for a single minute.  You had to be aware of him all the time.