He came to us in great distress the next morning.  He said Viola and Jevons were to have dined with them last night, only Reggie had declared he wouldn’t have anything to do with Jevons.  He didn’t want to meet him if he could help it.  He said, Couldn’t they ask Viola without him?  And they had asked Viola without him, and Viola had refused to come.

“And do you know” (he stared at us in a sort of helpless horror) “he hasn’t been to see her yet.”

The poor General went away quite depressed.  He lingered with me on the doorstep a moment.  “I’m afraid, Furnival,” he said, “Reggie’s going to make it very awkward for us.”

He did make it awkward.

It might have been discreet to have put off our dinner.  But I knew that Norah wouldn’t hear of it; all the more if Reggie was going to make it awkward.  You don’t suppose one Thesiger was going to knuckle under to another.  It wasn’t their way.  They were loyal to the last degree, but loyalty was another matter.  And if it came to that she was loyal to her sister.

I shall never forget that dinner.  I shall never forget Viola’s coming in with Jevons behind her.

She was, as I think I’ve said, a beautifully-made woman, with long limbs and superb shoulders, and a way of holding her small head high.  Well, she came in (they were a little late) with her head higher than ever, and with a sweep of her limbs, as if her crushed draperies (she was all in white) were blown backward by a wind; her gauze scarf billowed behind her as if it were wings or sails and the wind filled it.  She was like the Victory of Samothrace; she was like a guardian and avenging angel; she was like a ship in full sail breasting a sea.  Up to her eyes she was everything that was ever splendid and courageous and defiant.

But her eyes—­there was a sort of scared grief in them.

I had seen fright in her face once before, the day when she came into the room at Hampstead with Jevons behind her and saw Reggie there.  I said to myself, “She always was afraid of Reggie.”  But that, for the second that it lasted, was sheer fright.  This was different.  There was anguish in it; and it was only in her eyes.

And Jevons’s entry, this time, was simultaneous.  Little Jimmy came behind her, holding himself rather absurdly straight and breathing hard.

And there was Reggie Thesiger waiting for them, standing by the hearth between Norah and me.

Oh yes, India had changed him.  Surely, I thought, it must be India that had made him so lean and stiff and hard.  But he was handsomer even than he had been five years ago, and he looked taller, he was so formidably upright and well-built. (As a competitive exhibition Jimmy’s straightness was pitiful.  And yet, if his antagonist had been anybody but Reggie, it might have had a certain dignity.)

I wondered, “How is she going to greet him?  Will she lower her flag and kiss him, or what?”