Her sudden—perhaps excusable—jealousy of Anne Alison, her barbarous dismissal of Anthony, her quite inexcusable failure to give any reason for such treatment, her subsequent enlightenment by Anne herself—there is the skeleton whose dry bones he and she are to pick over—a gruesome business which has already been dispatched … upon the twentieth day of February, gentlemen, up in the Cotswold Hills. They both remember it perfectly. Yet Valerie must forget it, while Anthony must think it was a dream … must….
Neither by word nor look must Valerie suggest that the highly delicate ground she knows so well has ever been broken before.
Think, sirs, what a slip on her part will do.
It will plainly knock the three precious articles aforementioned into a cocked hat. Thence they will be retrieved to be turned against her—used to her condemnation by Anthony frantic. As for their love, the fragments of this that remain will not be worth taking up….
Anthony passed a hand across his forehead.
"Shall I tell you what I dreamed?"
"Yes," said Valerie.
"I dreamed that you came to me to make it up. And I was afraid. I tried to keep off the subject. I'd come such an awful cropper that I didn't want any more falls. But you would have it out…. And you said—don't laugh—that you'd turned me down because of Anne Alison." He stopped still and looked at her. "What was the real reason?"
Leaning her back against a green box wall, Valerie moistened her lips.
Then—
"It's perfectly true," she said quietly.