“With—­him?”

“Yes.”

“But, Brenda!” The long-drawn appeal of her name showed that the full bitterness of the truth was coming home to him at last.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and the sound of it was in some way painfully final.

“It isn’t because...” he began, but she anticipated his well-known reasons by saying,—­

“It’s nothing to do with you or with anything you’ve done, nothing whatever.  I’m sorry, Ronnie, but it’s fate—­just fate.  Do go, now.  I’ll see you again before—­before we go.”

And still he stood for an instant undecided; and I could see the struggle that was going on in him, between the influence of Harrow and Oxford and those of the honest, simple primitive man.  He knew that the right, conventional thing for him to do was to be magnanimous; to admit that he was the defeated lover, and to say something that would prove how splendid he could be in the moment of disaster.  The traditions of Harrow, Oxford, and the melodrama united to give him an indication of the proper conduct of the situation, and against them was ranged nothing more than one feral impulse to take Banks by the throat and settle his blasphemous assumption of rivalry off-hand.

But it was, I think, a third influence that decided the struggle for that time.  His glare of wrath at Banks had been followed by one last yearning look at Brenda, and some sentimental realisation of his loss rose and choked him, temporarily superseding the powers both of make-believe and instinct.  One lesson he had learnt at Harrow and Oxford so thoroughly that he re-acted to it even in this supreme crisis of his life.  He might give expression to brutal passion, but in no circumstances whatever must he break down and weep in public.

He turned quickly and blundered out of the room with a stumbling eagerness to be alone that was extraordinarily pathetic.

“You’ll admit, B., that it’s cursedly hard lines on Ronnie after all these years,” Frank said with what sounded like genuine emotion.

She took that up at once.  “I know it is,” she said.  “It’s going to be hard lines on lots of people, but there’s no way out of it.  You may think it’s silly tosh to talk about Fate; but it is Fate.”

And then she looked at Banks with something in her expression that was surely enough to compensate him for any pain or sacrifice he might have to endure for her.

“We can’t help it, can we, Arthur?” she said.

He was too moved to answer.  He set his lips tightly together and shook his head, gazing at her with a look of adoration and confidence that was almost violent in its protestation of love.

Jervaise turned round and leaned his forehead against the high mantelpiece.  I looked out of the window.  Anne remained hidden in the corner of the settle.  We all, no doubt, had the same feeling that this love-affair was showing itself as something too splendid to be interfered with.  Whether or not it had the qualities that make for endurance, it had a present force that dwarfed every other emotion.  Those two lovers ruled us by their perfect devotion to each other.  I felt ashamed of my presence there, as if I had intruded upon some fervent religious ceremony.  They were both so sincere, so gallant, and so proud.