not going to say what he did. It wouldn't be fair to him. It was a
little thing, but you couldn't pretend for one moment that you hadn't
seen it, any more than Jevons could do anything to cover the fantastic
horror of it. We simply sat and stiffened; all but Norah, who burst out
laughing in Jimmy's face.

Mildred, trying to help him, made matters worse by asking for a peach
when she had got a large one on her plate. Charlie Thesiger looked down
his nose. I don't know where I looked, but I know that I was conscious
of Viola's face and of the flush that darkened it to the tip of her chin
and the roots of her hair. And I could feel the shudder down her back
passing into mine.

After all, Viola did cover it. She lit a little Roman lamp they had and
sent it travelling down the table with the cigarette-box. Then she got up
and went to Jevons and stooped over his shoulder and took the little dish
from him.

"If anybody wants any more chocolates," she said, "they must come
upstairs for them."

"She won't trust me with them," said Jevons. (He _had_ a nerve.)

Viola trailed off upstairs with her dish, and Mildred and Charlie
followed her.

Norah and I held watch with Jevons, who leaned back in his chair and
smoked and rubbed the forefinger of his right hand--the innocent
instrument (may I say it?) of his crime--with his table napkin, and
contemplated Norah in a drowsy imperturbability.

"Did I do anything?" he said presently.

Norah put her hand on his arm and stroked it.

"No, Jimmy dear," she said, "of course you didn't."

It was then that I was aware for the first time of the beauty of Norah's
face. Norah's, not Viola's. Up till then I could never see anything but
Viola's face in it, coloured wrong, so that it rather worried me to look
at it, I resented the everlasting reminder of that likeness under that
perverse and disconcerting difference. If her eyes hadn't been so blue
and her cheeks so pink; if only her hair had been a little darker and if
it hadn't crinkled--

Now, as I looked at her, I wondered how anybody could think she was
like Viola. There was only her forehead and the odd turn of her jaw and
nose--her profile, if you like, was Viola's--but (when she wasn't
laughing) Norah's full face had something that Viola's hadn't and never
would have. I had caught it now and then and couldn't make up my mind
what it was. Now I saw that it was a sort of wisdom, a look of soberness
and goodness that I couldn't qui