the _Fact_. You
and I; the two least likely people in the world for such fancies, you'd
think--except Katherine. By the way, Katherine half thought I'd done it,
you know. So did Jukie.'

'I'm inclined now to think that K thought I had, that evening she came to
see me. She was rather sick with me for letting you be accused.'

'A regular Potter melodrama,' said Gideon. 'It might be in one of your
mother's novels or your father's papers. That just shows, Jane, how
infectious a thing Potterism is. It invades the least likely homes, and
upsets the least likely lives. Horrible, catching disease.'

Gideon was walking up and down the room in his restless way, playing with
the things on the tables. He stopped suddenly, and looked at Jane.

'Jane,' he said, 'we won't, you and I, have any more secrets and
concealments between us. They're rotten things. Next time it occurs to
you that I've committed a crime, ask me if it is so. And I'll do the same
to you, at whatever risk of being offensive. We'll begin now by telling
each other what we feel.... You know I love you, my dear.'

Oh, yes, Jane knew that. She said, 'I suppose I do, Arthur.'

He said, 'Then what about it? Do you ...' and she said, 'Rather, of
course I do.'

Then they kissed each other, and settled to get married next May or June.
The baby was coming in January.

'You'll have to put up with baby, you know, Arthur,' Jane said.

'Of course, poor little kid. I rather like them. It's rough luck on it
not having a father of its own. I'll try to be decent to it.'

That would be queer, thought Jane, Arthur being decent to Oliver's kid; a
boy, perhaps, with Oliver's face and Oliver's mind. Poor little kid: but
Jane would love it, and Arthur would be decent to it, and its
grandparents would spoil it; it would be their favourite, if any more
came. They wouldn't like the others, because they would be Gideon's. They
might look like little Yids. Perhaps there wouldn't be any others. Jane
wasn't keen. They were all right when they were there--jolly little
comics, all slippy in their baths, like eels--but they were an
unspeakable nuisance while on the way. A rotten system.

4

All next day Jane felt like stopping people in the streets and shouting
at them, 'Arthur didn't do it. Nor did I. It was only that silly ass,
Clare, or else it was an accident.' For even now Jane wasn't sure which
she thought.

But the only person to whom she really said it was Katherine. One to