away with _your_ precious perfection, at last
you understand?"

We had some difficulty in finding quarters and Viola insisted on our
staying in the Station Hotel, which had been bombarded by an aeroplane
the night before. She pointed out that it was almost entirely empty. "And
so," she said, "there won't be anybody to see us."

It was as if she wished to remind me by how thin a thread _my_ reputation
hung.

The business of our passports kept us in Ostend the next morning. I had
made up my mind there would be difficulty about Viola's military pass, I
was even contemplating the possibility of her being sent back to England
by the next boat; but no; she had forestalled obstruction, and the pocket
of her khaki coat was stuffed with letters from the War Office, the
British Red Cross, and the French and Belgian Embassies. In fact, there
was one horrid moment at the depot when it looked as if the Special
Correspondent would be smuggled through under Viola's protection.

"You see, Furny," she said, "nobody's going to stop me. Nobody wants to
stop me."

At last we got off, and early in the afternoon we were in Bruges.

We had run into the Market-Place before we knew where we were; and yonder
in the street at the back of it was Viola's _pension_, and here on our
right hand was Jimmy's hotel, and there, towering before us, was the
Belfry. We looked at each other. And through the war and across nine
years, it all came back to us.

"The Belfry's still there," I said.

"It always was." She said it a little sternly. But she had smiled at the
allusion, all the same--the smile that had never been denied to it.

We stayed an hour in Bruges and lunched there in Jimmy's hotel. The fat
proprietor and his wife were still there and they remembered us. They
remembered Jimmy. And they had seen him three days ago. Mr. Chevons had
passed through Bruges in his Red Cross motor-car. They seemed uncertain
whether Viola was Mrs. Chevons or Mrs. Furnival, and they addressed her
indifferently as either. An awful indifference had come to them. Of the
war they said, _"C'est triste, nest-ce pas?"_ We left them, sitting
pallid and depressed behind the barricade of their bureau, gazing after
us with the saddest of smiles.

That hour in Bruges was a mistake; so was our lunching at Jimmy's hotel.
It was too much for Viola. It brought Jimmy so horribly near to her. I
don't know what she was thinking, but I am convinced that from the moment
of our e