to Ghent I couldn't--I don't know how it was--but
it came over me that I couldn't--I hadn't the courage. I think I found
out that she was afraid or something. We'd taken rooms in that hotel
you were in in the _Place d'Armes_. We were sitting together in the
lounge--you know that big lounge on the first floor with the glass
partition in it along the staircase--you can see people through it going
up and down stairs. She'd got up suddenly and stuck out her hand and said
good night. And there was a look in her eyes--Fright, a sort of fright.

"I saw her through the glass going up the stair. When she got to the
landing I saw her turn her head over her shoulder and look down into the
lounge, to make sure I was still there.

"She looked so helpless somehow--and so pretty--that for the life of me I
couldn't.

"No.

"I took her back to Bruges the next morning and put her in the _pension_
with those women."

I thought of the irony of it.

If Jevons had really been the blackguard he seemed we could have hushed
it up. If he hadn't repented, if he hadn't taken her back to Bruges and
put her in the _pension_ with those women, ten to one Withers wouldn't
have seen them and General Thesiger's friends wouldn't have heard of
them. I should have got her quietly away from Ghent without Canterbury
being a bit the wiser.

But I didn't tell Jevons that. I hadn't the heart to.

We stayed three days longer in Bruges. There were still some odd corners
of the city that he hadn't had time to look up.

Jevons was very kind to me all those three days.

After we got back to England Jevons's affairs picked up and went forward
with a rush. His novel came out at the end of May. In June he was made
sub-editor of _Sport_, and thus acquired a settled income. And one
morning in July I got a letter from Viola written at Quimpol in Brittany:

"MY DEAR WALTER:

"I married Jimmy five days ago. Nobody but Norah knew anything about it
till it was all over. But I wrote and told Daddy before we left England.
I'm afraid he's had a sore throat ever since. I wish you'd go down to
Canterbury and tell them that it's all right and that I'm ever so happy.
There really isn't any reason why Daddy shouldn't sing.

"As Norah says: 'It's his not singing that gives the show away.' Yours
ever,

"V. J."

BOOK II

HER BOOK

VI

I did not go down to Canterbury all at once. I was vowed, of course, to
Mrs. Jevons's everlasting service (I think