and I had turned in after dinner; it was upstairs in that
drawing-room in Edwardes Square that they had made, back and front, in an
L. Norah and I were in the long, narrow part at the back; you know how
those little town rooms go when they're knocked into one--the fireplaces
in the same wall and windows opposite each other, so that the back rakes
the fireplace end of the front part.

Viola and Jevons were by the fireplace in the front, she in her low chair
and he stretched out on the rug at her feet. And we raked them.

They didn't know they were observed. I think they'd made up their minds
that when Norah and I were together we couldn't hear or see anything
except ourselves.

And so we heard Viola saying, "What do you do it for?"

And Jimmy, "Oh, for the fun of the thing, I suppose. What does one do
things for?"

And she, "It'll be fine fun for me, won't it, when you've killed
yourself? When you've burst the top of your head off like the kitchen
boiler?"

"I should have to run dry first," said Jevons.

"Well, you will, boiling away seven--eight--nine hours a day for weeks on
end. Nobody else does it."

"Nobody else _can_ do it," said Jimmy arrogantly.

"It's all very well; but if you don't burst your head open you'll get
neuritis, or cramp. Look at that hand."

"Which hand?"

"Your right hand, silly." She took it and poised it from the wrist. "Look
how it wobbles."

He looked.

"It does wobble a bit. Like a drunkard's. And I don't drink."

He was interested in his hand.

"You goose, where's the fun of letting your right hand go to pieces?"

"Easy on. They won't amputate it," said Jimmy.

That was in nineteen-nine. This is nineteen-fifteen. And only yesterday
Norah asked me if I remembered what Jimmy said about his hand the night
we were engaged.

* * * * *

Yes, that night I was engaged to Norah Thesiger.

I suppose it was our silence that made Viola and Jimmy aware of us at
last, for presently I saw Jimmy sit up on the floor and take Viola's hand
and squeeze it, and then they got up and very quietly and furtively they
left the room.

And the minute I found myself alone with Norah I proposed to her.

I don't know if even then I should have had the courage to do it if I
hadn't been driven to it by sheer terror. I forgot to say that I was in
Edwardes Square for the weekend and that Norah was not staying with her
sister this time, but with her uncle, General Thes