ten, in the green room of the Crown Theatre on the
hundredth night of Jimmy's play. That is what I remember it by.

Norah and I were with Viola and Jimmy. Withers had come in with a friend,
an important member of the cast, who was evidently under the impression
that we had never met before, for he introduced him to us all round.
Withers showed tact in not recognizing Viola or claiming the acquaintance
he certainly had with Jevons. He had, in fact, a most reassuring air of
starting again with a clean slate and no reminiscences. This was in the
interval between the First and Second Acts. When the curtain rose on Act
Two, I was alone in Jimmy's box. (Jimmy and Viola and Norah were trying
the effect of the play from the stalls.) And at the next interval Withers
came to me there. It was funny, he said, the way little Jevons had come
on. He didn't suppose any of us had thought of _this_ four years ago when
we had all met together in Bruges.

I said, "Did we all meet together in Bruges?"

"Well, if it wasn't in Ghent. Oh--of course it was at Ghent you and I
met. You hadn't joined the others then."

At first I was hopelessly mystified by these allusions. I couldn't think
what point he was making for or where he would come out. He seemed to be
trying uneasily to get somewhere. Then I saw that he had had it on his
mind that when we had last met he had made a defamatory statement to me
about the lady who had become my sister-in-law, and about a man who had
become a celebrity (I knew Withers's little weakness for celebrities).
And he was scared.

I must have seemed a bit lost among his allusions, for he blurted it out.

"D'you know, I've been most awfully sorry for chaffing you in that
idiotic way--about--your sister-in-law. Silly sort of thing one says, you
know. But of course you knew I was pulling your leg."

I said, "My dear Withers, of course I knew you were."

Of course I knew he was doing nothing of the sort, for Withers slandered
right and left when it wasn't worth his while to grovel, and I had no
doubt now that he believed his own dirty tale when he told it; but he had
been impressed and thoroughly frightened, even at the time, by the
calmness of my bluff, and the little beast was far more afraid of us than
we ever could have been of him now. We could henceforth dismiss Withers
from our minds. He was a "social climber" of the sort that would eat his
own words if he thought they would do the smallest damage to his