ome himself."

"That," I said, "is what I'm trying to prevent. He doesn't know
you're here. I want to get you back to England before he does know.
Besides--he's sailing for India next week."

Then she broke down; that's to say, she lowered her flags. Her head sank
to her breast; her eyes stared at the stone path; their lids reddened and
swelled with the springing of tears that would not fall.

"Didn't you know?" I said.

"I suppose I must have known--once."

Up till this moment she had not said one word, she had not made one sign,
that had really given her away. And nothing could have given her away
more completely than the thing she had said now. She had confessed to a
passion so dominating and so blind as to be unaware of anything but
itself. It was not so much that it had swept before it all the codes and
traditions she had been brought up in--codes and traditions might well
have been nothing to Viola--it had struck at her strongest affection and
her memory. She adored her brother. He was sailing for India next week;
she must have known it; and she had forgotten it.

Her confession was not made to me (she had forgotten _my_ existence
utterly); it was made to herself--the old self that had adored Reggie;
that at this evocation of him arose and sat in judgment on the strange,
perverted, monstrous self that could forget him. I've called it a
confession; but it wasn't a confession. It was a cry, a muttering,
rather, of secret, agonized discovery.

"He wants to see you before he goes," I said.

Her eyelids spilled their tears at that; but only those they had
gathered; no more came. Her self-control was admirable.

"It's all right," I said. "You've heaps of time. I'm going to take you to
Ostend in the morning. You'll be in Canterbury to-morrow night."

"Is that what you came for?"

"Yes."

"It was awfully nice of you."

"There was nothing else," I said, "to do."

"You're coming with me to Canterbury." She stated it.

"No, my dear child," I said, "I am not. You don't want them to think you
went to Bruges with _me_."

This was by implication a reference to Jevons. It was as near as I had
let myself get to him.

She said, "What are you going to do, then?"

"I'm going to put you on the boat at Ostend, and then I'm coming back
here."

It must have been at this point that the _garcon_ brought the coffee. For
I remember our sitting out there and drinking it amicably until the aroma
of it gave Viola an ide