how I put it, provided I
_was_ dished. But--was I?

Oh yes! She left me in no doubt that I was dished. And I saw--I still
see, and if anything more clearly--why.

I was everything that Canterbury approved of. And Viola, in her young
revolt, was up against everything of which Canterbury approved. Her
people were dear people; they were charming people, well-bred people;
they had unbroken traditions of beautiful behaviour. And they had tied
her up too tight in their traditions; that was all. Viola would never
marry anybody on whom Canterbury had set its seal.

And seeing all that, I saw that I had missed her by a mere accident. It
was my friend the General who had dished me when he testified to my
entire eligibility. That's to say, it was my own fault. If I had let well
alone; if I hadn't turned the General on to them, _I_ should have been
in the highest degree ineligible; _I_ should have been a person of whom
Canterbury most severely disapproved; when I've no doubt that Viola, out
of sheer perversity, would have insisted on marrying me.

She said as much. So far she saw into herself and no farther.

The Northern Heights were favourable to this interview, for the taxi
broke down in an attempt to scale East Heath Road, so that we walked the
last few hundred yards together to her door.

It was while we were walking that--stung by a sudden fear, a reminiscence
of the afternoon--I asked her: Was there anybody else?

No, she said, there wasn't. How could there be? Hadn't she told me she
liked me better than anybody else, next to Reggie?

"Are you sure?" I said. "Are you quite sure?"

She stopped in the middle of the road and looked at me.

"Of course," she said. "There _isn't_ anybody. Except poor, funny little
Jevons. And you couldn't mean him."

That was as near as we got to him then.

But a week later--the week before Easter--he came to us suddenly in my
rooms where Viola was correcting proofs for me.

He had come to tell us of his good luck. His novel had been accepted.

I was glad, of course. But Viola was more than glad. She was excited,
agitated. She jumped up and said: "Oh, Jimmy!" (She called him Jimmy, and
her voice told me that it was not for the first time.) "Jimmy! How
simply spiffing!"

And I saw him look at her with a grave and tender assurance, as a man
looks at the woman he loves when he knows that the hour of his triumph is
her hour.

And I thought even then: It's nothing. It's only that sh