o, of course I didn't. He didn't know it himself. There was no reason
why he shouldn't go. And you'd have thought there was no reason why we
shouldn't go together. He was all right till we got to Petworth. But
after that he lost his head and made such an ass of himself that I had to
get out here and make him go on by himself. Silly idiot!"

We were sitting in the heather, one on each side of her, and I saw my
wife slip her arm into hers and hug it to her.

"Did _you_ know," she said, "that Charlie'd gone?"

We didn't answer. We simply couldn't.

And then Viola said, "Poor little Norah!"

And she told her to run away for ten minutes while she talked to me.

"Why poor little Norah?" I asked when we were alone.

"Because," she said, "you frightened her."

"I? Frightened her?"

"Yes," she said. "You made her think I was going to run away with
Charlie. There's no good trying to look as if you didn't. You're quite
awful, Furny, in the things you think. You can't help it, I know. You're
so good, so shockingly good, and you can't bear other people to be
naughty. You thought I'd run away to Belgium with Jimmy and you came
rushing after me and fetched me back. You thought I'd run away with
Charlie and you came rushing--in your dreadful rectitude, and in Jimmy's
motor-car that he won't let anybody look at. You'll have an awful time
with Jimmy when you get back. It's going to rain, and there'll be mud on
the car, and he'll dance with rage when he sees it. And he won't think
it's any excuse if you tell him you thought I was running away with
Charlie, and you took the car to fetch me back; he'll say you'd no
business to think it and in any case you'd no business to take the car
out. And poor Kendal will be sacked.

"That's all you've done," she said, "by your fussy interference."

She went on. "It wouldn't matter what you think about me--but it was
beastly of you to go and make Norah think it."

I said I didn't suppose either of us thought anything, except that since
she was going up to town with the idea of leaving her husband, it was not
desirable that she should go up with Charlie Thesiger.

"Who could possibly have supposed," she said, "that Charlie would be such
an ass?"

I said I for one could.

"Oh, you--haven't I told you you're always supposing things?"

"Surely?" I said, "you must have seen--yourself--"

She smiled. "My dear--I couldn't see anything but poor Jimmy."

"And yet," I said, "you could think