ces
to the War Office in the event of England's coming in.

That Charlie had used the opportunity of going to make love to Jimmy's
wife didn't seem to bother Jimmy in the least.

Sunday, I remember, was a fine day, with all the dust laid, and Jimmy
made himself lovable by running me up to London in his sacred car. He
still clung--I could see that he clung--to the superstition of its
sanctity.

He left me at my door in Edwardes Square, which he refused to enter. I
think he was afraid of seeing Viola. I thought at the time that this was
because he was aware of her attitude; that he knew she was at the end of
her tether, and that he wanted to be righteously fair, to give her time
to think about leaving him, if she wanted to leave him; that he was
behaving now as he had behaved at Bruges when he stood back and let me
have my innings, and gave her her chance to free herself. And yet I was
puzzled. Even he could hardly stand back to give Thesiger an innings. He
_may_ have had an inkling. There may have been something of his queer,
scrupulous tenderness in this avoidance of her; there may have been his
reckless propensity to take the risk; but I am convinced that even then
his main object was--like Viola--to burn his boats. He was afraid that if
he were to see Viola again he wouldn't be able to go through with it. He
may even have been glad that she had left him, because it had made his
way easier.

And so, when he had landed me at my door, he turned the black nose of his
car round and ran out of Edwardes Square faster than he had run in; as if
he were afraid that the place would catch and keep him.

He didn't go back to Amershott. He stayed in London in one of his clubs
(he had several now, besides the club in Dover Street), and I saw him
sometimes. I didn't say anything to Viola about him. I didn't tell her he
was in town. It was as if there had been some tacit understanding among
the three of us; there must have been some tacit agreement between him
and me.

Sunday passed, and Monday somehow; and on Tuesday, the fourth, we were
all holding our breaths under the tension of the Ultimatum.

I have no doubt that in those three days I had some opinion of my own
about the European conflagration, that I must have stared with my own
eyes sometimes at the fate of Europe and the fate of England, that I must
have felt _some_ horror and anxiety and excitement that was my own. But
as I look back on it all I am aware chiefly of J