ng himself up again he ended quite
sweetly by saying, "It's my fault, Furny. I ought to have had two cars
all along."

I said it _would_ be a good plan, if a black-and-white car was only to be
looked at.

He admitted (with a recrudescence of his old childlike innocence) that he
liked looking at it. I've no doubt he said it made him feel something,
but I forget what.

But when the morning came he wouldn't hear of my going. I was to stay out
my fortnight. It was a fine day and the dust was laid; perhaps he could
take me for a spin across the Downs to the coast or somewhere. He'd send
Parker up to town to look after Nurse and Baby and the luggage. He didn't
want, he said, to be left alone.

Oh yes, it was plain to me that he didn't want to be left--that he
couldn't bear it. He was trying to lure me to stay with him by holding
out this prospect of a spin. I have since believed that he would have
agreed to take his car out in almost any weather, if that had been the
only way to keep me. He clung to me desperately, pathetically, as he had
clung nine years ago at Bruges when Viola had left him there. He might,
possibly, this time, have clung to anybody; he was so afraid of being
left alone. I think he felt that loneliness here, in the vast, unfamiliar
landscape that he had invaded, would be as bad as loneliness in Bruges.
He would be abandoned, as he had been then, in a foreign country.

So till Sunday morning I stayed with him.

It was on my last evening, the evening of Saturday, August the first,
that he spoke of Viola.

He asked me if I thought that Norah and I could keep her with us, if
necessary, for--he hesitated--for six months? (It was as if he had given
her six months.) It would, he said, be better.

I said that Norah would be delighted to keep her for any number of
months. But did he think she'd stay?

He said why shouldn't she stay? Of course she'd stay. She was awfully
fond of us and it was the best thing she could do. And it would make it
so much easier for him. He'd feel more comfortable as long as he knew she
was with us.

He spoke as if it were he and not Viola who was leaving.

I said then that though we were glad to have her we couldn't, of course,
accept any responsibility--

He smiled slightly and asked, "For what?"

I said, "Well--" And he answered his own question in the pause I made.

"I suppose you mean for anything she may take it into her head to do?"

I put it to him that Viola's m