She sailed up to Norah first and kissed her.  She shook hands with me.  She smiled at me (I don’t know how she managed it).  Then she turned to Reggie.

She didn’t lower her flag.  She said, “Well, Reggie,” as if they had met yesterday.  There was no kissing or any anticipation of a kiss; they shook hands, not at arm’s length, not in the least as if they had had a quarrel, but like well-bred people in the house of strangers.  It was all beautifully done.

Then it was Jimmy’s turn.  Reggie looked at him as if he wasn’t there.

If I could have run away with any decency I’d have run rather than face what came then.  But the women—­Heavens, how they stood to their guns!

Norah said, “Reggie, I think you know your brother-in-law?” with an air of stating a platitude rather than of recalling him to a courtesy he had forgotten.

“I don’t think so,” said Reggie.

But he bowed.  And Jimmy bowed.  There was no handshaking, at arm’s length or otherwise.

Viola said, “You do know him.  You met him four years ago in my rooms at Hampstead.”

“Did I?  I’m afraid I’ve forgotten.”

“You did meet, didn’t you, Jimmy?”

“I believe so,” said Jimmy, with a quite admirable indifference.

“Anyhow,” said Norah sweetly, “you can’t say you haven’t heard of him.”

She meant well, poor darling, but it was a bad shot.  It missed its mark completely, and it drew down the enemy’s fire.

“I have heard of Mr. Jevons,” said Reggie, and he looked at Jimmy as if he realized for the first time that he was there, and resented it.

Norah turned positively white.  It was Viola who saved us.

“Please don’t, Norah.  It’s really awful for poor Jimmy now he’s on all the buses and in the Tube?”

She referred to the monstrous posters that advertised his play in black letters eighteen inches high on a scarlet ground.

“How do you feel when you’re in the Tube?” said Norah.

“You feel,” said Jimmy—­he was sitting in one of his worst attitudes, with his legs stretched straight out before him and his feet tilted toes upwards.  I noticed that Reggie couldn’t bear to look at him—­“you feel first of all as if everybody was looking at you; you feel a silly ass; then you feel as if everybody was looking at the posters; then you know they aren’t looking at them.  Then you leave off looking at them yourself.  And if one does hit you in the eye you feel as if it referred to somebody else, and after that you don’t feel anything more.”

It wasn’t brilliant, but the wonder was he found anything to say at all.

I was thankful when Pavitt came in to tell us that dinner was served.  It delivered us from Jimmy’s attitudes.

When it came to dining at our small round table we saw how badly we had erred in not asking anybody else but Viola and Jimmy.  A sixth, a woman (almost any woman would have done in the circumstances), a woman to talk to Reggie might have pulled us through.  But with Reggie sitting beside Viola, with Jimmy opposite them by himself between me and Norah (the only possible arrangement) it was terrible.