passion, without seeing where
she was going. I don't think she had seen, any more than I had, that for
nine years I had been living behind a screen. A screen that had hidden me
from myself. I don't think she saw even now when she came crashing into
it.

It was I who saw.

The thing was down about my ears; and it wasn't the violence of its fall
that terrified me; it was my own nakedness. I wasn't prepared to find
myself morally undressed.

I turned away from her. I began fiddling with my pens and papers. I
trailed long slip-proofs under her eyes, pretending that I had work to
do. But she saw through my pretences and her voice followed me.

It was softer, though. It seemed to be pleading, as if she knew nothing
about me and my screen.

"What harm did I ever do you? Or poor Jimmy either? I didn't let you
marry me. You ought to be grateful to Jimmy. At least he saved you from
that."

I said I thought we needn't drag her husband into it, and I haven't a
notion what I meant. I had to say something, and if it sounded
disagreeable, so much the better.

And she said there I was again--thinking that I had to remind her that
Jimmy _was_ her husband.

"You certainly seem to have forgotten it," I said.

"_He_ knows how much I've forgotten."

With that last word she left me.

I tried hard to shake the horror of it off. I remember I sat down to my
proofs, and I suppose I tried to correct them. But all the time I heard
Viola's voice saying, "I can understand your wanting me to be horrid
_then_, because it made it easier for you.... But why on earth you should
keep it up like this! What can it matter to you _now_ whether I'm nice or
horrid?"

It went on in my head till the words ceased to have any meaning. I had
only a dreadful sense that I should remember them to-morrow, and that
perhaps when to-morrow came I should know what they meant.

* * * * *

And when to-morrow came the war took up my attention again, so that I
actually forgot that Viola had said she was going out to it.

She had let the subject drop abruptly. She didn't even refer to it when
my friend the editor of the _Morning Standard_ rang me up the next day to
ask me if I'd go out to Belgium as their Special Correspondent.

He was charmingly frank about it. He told me that it was Tasker Jevons he
wanted, and Tasker Jevons he had asked to go, but since he couldn't get
him (and his powerful pen) why then, he'd had to fall back o