I laughed outright—it was all so true.
Friday—Maurice brings people to play bridge every afternoon now. Nina has gone back to England—having decided to take Jim!
It came about in this way—She flew in to tell me the last evening before she left for Havre. She was breathless running up the stairs, as something had gone wrong with the lift.
"Jim and I are engaged!"
"A thousand congratulations."
"Rochester had a dinner for me on Wednesday night. All the jolliest people in Paris—some of those dear French who have been so nice to us all along, and some of the War Council and the Ryvens, and so on—and, do you know, Nicholas—I heard Rochester telling Madame de Clerté the same story about his bon mot when a shell broke at Avicourt—as I had already heard him tell Admiral Short, and Daisy Ryven!—that decided me—. There was an element of self-glorification in that modest story—and a man who would tell it three times, is not for me! In ten years I should grow into being the listener victim—I could not face it! So I said good-bye to him in the corridor, before up to my room—and I telephoned to Jim, who was in his room on the Cambon side, and he came round in the morning!"
"Was Rochester upset?"
"Rather! but a man of his age—he is forty-two, who can tell a self-story three times is going to get cured soon, so I did not worry."
"And what did Jim say?"
"He was enchanted, he said he knew it would end like that—give a man of forty-two rope enough and he'll be certain to hang himself, he said, and, Oh! Nicholas—Jim is a darling, he is getting quite masterful—I adore him!"