“Don’t you see—­that was part of the burning.  She had to break the hold that Reggie had on her.  You don’t know what it was like, Wally.  She had to break it or she could never have married Jimmy at all.  It was a toss-up between them; and Jimmy won.”

“Is it going to be a toss-up between them all over again, d’you think?” I said.

“No.  It’s going to be war to the knife.  They won’t either of them give in as long as Reggie’s got that idea in his head.”

“We must get it out of his head.  Surely,” I said, “we can do something.”

“No, we can’t.  There’s no way of getting it out.  It’s no good trying to make a joke of it.  You can’t joke with Reggie past a certain point.  And it’s not as if you could give him a hint.  You can’t hint at these things.”

“What do you think he’ll do?”

“He won’t do anything.  He won’t say anything.  He’ll just go on like this all the time, and she won’t be able to bear it.  It’ll break her heart.”

Well, though I agreed with her, I still thought that something could be done.  I tried to do it when Reggie got back that night after Norah had gone to bed.  I couldn’t of course assume that he had his idea.  My plan was to present Jevons to him in a light that was incompatible with his idea.  It was easy enough to say that Jevons might be rather startling, but that he was awfully decent and the soul of honour.  The soul of honour covered it—­absolutely ruled out his idea.

He didn’t contradict me.  He just sat there smoking amicably, just saying every now and then that he couldn’t stand him; he was sorry—­I might be perfectly right and Jevons might be everything I said—­only he couldn’t stand him; and he wasn’t going to.  Nothing would induce him to stop with Jevons.  He didn’t want to have anything to do with the little beast.

When I said, “I assure you, my dear fellow, it’s all right,” he only threw the onus of suspicion on me by replying suavely, “My dear fellow, I assure you I never said it wasn’t.”

It was as if he really knew it wasn’t, knew something that we didn’t know, and was determined to keep his knowledge to himself.

And when I’d finished he said, “The whole thing’s a mystery to me.  I thought she was going to marry you.”  And then—­“How she can stick him I can’t think.  D’you mind, old man, if I go to bed?  No, I don’t want any whisky and soda, thanks.”

It was Pavitt, of all people, who threw a light on it when he brought the whisky.

“Beg your pardon, sir,” said Pavitt, “but I believe I never told you that the Captain called here one day when you was in Belgium.”

“Are you quite sure, Pavitt?  He called the day I left.”

“Yes, sir, I remember his calling the day you left.  It’s only just come back to me that he called again, three days after, I think it was.  I told him you was gone to Belgium, and he said that was all he wanted.  He didn’t leave no message, else I should have remembered.  It was the young gentleman’s likeness to Mrs. Jevons, sir, what fixed him in my mind.”