g for refinement in his
surroundings, Jevons hadn't allowed for the effect of contrast. It hadn't
occurred to him that an interior that harmonized with Viola would be
damaging to him. And it was. Just how damaging I hadn't realized until
to-night (which shows how careful he must have been at Canterbury). He
didn't stand out. He burst out. He never sank into his background for a
single minute. You had to be aware of him all the time.

And yet in a party of the confraternity you were not aware of him like
this. For then he blazed; and in the flare he made you didn't notice
whether he tilted his soup-plate the right way or not, or care if he
couldn't use his table napkin or his pocket-handkerchief and look you
square in the face at the same time. Neither did you notice these things
if you were alone with him or if only Norah and Viola were there. He was
happy with us, and happiness was becoming to him, and he had all sorts of
endearing ways that would have disarmed us. And then there's no doubt
that Viola protected him. She watched over him; she smoothed his social
path for him; she removed his worst pitfalls; she ran, as it were, to
pick him up before he fell. He didn't know she was watching him; neither,
I think, did she. It was a blind instinct with her to help him. And Norah
and I helped him too. And as he wasn't nervous with us everything went
well. But when strangers got into our party it was different. Viola
couldn't attend to him properly; and if the stranger happened to be
rather stupid, like Charlie Thesiger, Jevons didn't blaze and so cover
himself; he got bored; and when he was bored he got jumpy; and it was
when he got jumpy that he did things.

And Charlie was getting on his nerves.

Still, everything went well until the table was cleared for dessert; and
there was no reason why everything shouldn't have gone well even then.
Viola had guarded against his most inveterate failing--a habit of
stretching for things across the table--by putting everything he wanted
within his reach. Within Jevons's reach to-night was a little dish
containing among other things chocolate nougat. And he was fond of
nougat. He was fond also of chaffing Norah. And he was not prepared to
forego one amusement for the other. And Norah had taken a mean advantage
of him. She had timed a provocation at the moment when for any other man
retort would have been impossible; and she hadn't reckoned with Jevons's
ingenuity of resource.

I am