r years ago.
Have we any of us thought of it since?"

"No--but I think he had an idea then. He guessed that there must be
something. You see--we never told Vee-Vee, but--he thought it was awfully
queer of her to go off--anywhere--just when he was sailing."

"Well," I said, "it _was_ a bit odd. She must have been awfully gone on
Jimmy."

"She was."

"Poor dear. She said she meant to burn her boats."

"Don't you see--that was part of the burning. She had to break the hold
that Reggie had on her. You don't know what it was like, Wally. She had
to break it or she could never have married Jimmy at all. It was a
toss-up between them; and Jimmy won."

"Is it going to be a toss-up between them all over again, d'you think?" I
said.

"No. It's going to be war to the knife. They won't either of them give in
as long as Reggie's got that idea in his head."

"We must get it out of his head. Surely," I said, "we can do something."

"No, we can't. There's no way of getting it out. It's no good trying to
make a joke of it. You can't joke with Reggie past a certain point. And
it's not as if you could give him a hint. You can't hint at these
things."

"What do you think he'll do?"

"He won't do anything. He won't say anything. He'll just go on like this
all the time, and she won't be able to bear it. It'll break her heart."

Well, though I agreed with her, I still thought that something could be
done. I tried to do it when Reggie got back that night after Norah had
gone to bed. I couldn't of course assume that he had his idea. My plan
was to present Jevons to him in a light that was incompatible with his
idea. It was easy enough to say that Jevons might be rather startling,
but that he was awfully decent and the soul of honour. The soul of honour
covered it--absolutely ruled out his idea.

He didn't contradict me. He just sat there smoking amicably, just saying
every now and then that he couldn't stand him; he was sorry--I might be
perfectly right and Jevons might be everything I said--only he couldn't
stand him; and he wasn't going to. Nothing would induce him to stop with
Jevons. He didn't want to have anything to do with the little beast.

When I said, "I assure you, my dear fellow, it's all right," he only
threw the onus of suspicion on me by replying suavely, "My dear fellow, I
assure you I never said it wasn't."

It was as if he really knew it wasn't, knew something that we didn't
know, and was determined to keep