And so we heard Viola saying, “What do you do it for?”

And Jimmy, “Oh, for the fun of the thing, I suppose.  What does one do things for?”

And she, “It’ll be fine fun for me, won’t it, when you’ve killed yourself?  When you’ve burst the top of your head off like the kitchen boiler?”

“I should have to run dry first,” said Jevons.

“Well, you will, boiling away seven—­eight—­nine hours a day for weeks on end.  Nobody else does it.”

“Nobody else can do it,” said Jimmy arrogantly.

“It’s all very well; but if you don’t burst your head open you’ll get neuritis, or cramp.  Look at that hand.”

“Which hand?”

“Your right hand, silly.”  She took it and poised it from the wrist.  “Look how it wobbles.”

He looked.

“It does wobble a bit.  Like a drunkard’s.  And I don’t drink.”

He was interested in his hand.

“You goose, where’s the fun of letting your right hand go to pieces?”

“Easy on.  They won’t amputate it,” said Jimmy.

That was in nineteen-nine.  This is nineteen-fifteen.  And only yesterday Norah asked me if I remembered what Jimmy said about his hand the night we were engaged.

* * * * *

Yes, that night I was engaged to Norah Thesiger.

I suppose it was our silence that made Viola and Jimmy aware of us at last, for presently I saw Jimmy sit up on the floor and take Viola’s hand and squeeze it, and then they got up and very quietly and furtively they left the room.

And the minute I found myself alone with Norah I proposed to her.

I don’t know if even then I should have had the courage to do it if I hadn’t been driven to it by sheer terror.  I forgot to say that I was in Edwardes Square for the weekend and that Norah was not staying with her sister this time, but with her uncle, General Thesiger, at Lancaster Gate.  And for three days, ever since her arrival at Lancaster Gate, I had seen the possibility of losing her.

Otherwise you would have said that if ever there was a spontaneous and unexpected performance, it was my proposal to Norah Thesiger.

But no; it seemed that it had been arranged for me by Jevons, planned with his customary deliberation and calculation long ago.  This may have been the reason why Norah said she wouldn’t tell Viola and Jimmy about it herself; she’d rather I did.

I thought:  I shan’t have to tell them till to-morrow.  I had to take Norah to Lancaster Gate in a taxi, and I walked back across the Serpentine between Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, spinning out the time so that Viola and Jimmy might be in bed when I got to Edwardes Square.

I found them sitting up for me in Jimmy’s study.