l back into his old habits.

All those years we seem to have been looking on at the slow, slow process
of his vulgarization. By nineteen-twelve the confraternity had begun to
regard Tasker Jevons as an outrageous joke. And in nineteen-thirteen,
when both his plays were still running, even his father-in-law said that
he was a disgusting spectacle. And Reggie (he was Major Thesiger now,
with a garrison appointment at Woolwich) Reggie kept as far away from him
as ever.

Sometimes I have thought that Viola's detachment helped his undoing. She
wasn't there to pull him up or to cover his disasters; she had more and
more the look of not being there at all.

And Charlie Thesiger was always there. There with a most decided look of
being up to something.

Jevons didn't seem to mind him. You might have said that Charlie was
another of the risks he took.

X

In nineteen-thirteen Jimmy bought a motor-car.

He was more excited about his motor-car than he had been about his
house--any of his houses. Even Viola was interested and came rushing down
from her Belfry when it arrived.

He bought it at the end of January. A good, useful car that would shut or
open and serve for town or country. But it was no good to them till
April.

For all February and March Viola was ill. She had been running down
gradually for about two years, getting a little whiter and a little
slenderer every month, and in the first week of February she got
influenza and ignored it, and went out for a drive in the motor-car with
a temperature of a hundred and four.

Nineteen-thirteen stands out for me as the year of Viola's illness.

It turned to pneumonia and she was dangerously ill for three weeks, in
fact, she nearly died of it; and for more weeks than I can remember she
lay about on sofas to which Jimmy and the nurse or one of us carried her
from her bed. And in all that time Jimmy nursed and waited on her and sat
up with her at night. If he slept it was with one eye and both ears open.
And I never saw anybody as gentle as he was and as skilful with his hands
and quiet. He didn't even breathe hard. And when she was convalescent and
a little fretful and troublesome there wasn't anybody else who could
manage her. The nurses would call him to feed her and give her her
medicine and lift her. She couldn't bear anybody else to touch her.

I remember one day when she had been moved from her bed to the couch for
the first time and she was so weak, p