It was not more than three days after this eventful meeting that the great surprise was sprung upon me.
I had been given two tickets for the first night of Arnold Bennett's Judith. We arrived late, and it was not until the first interval that Peter could deliver to me his astounding news.
"What do you think has happened?" he cried. "I give you three guesses, but you may as well resign at once. If I gave you a hundred, you'd never guess."
"What is it?" I asked.
"Bomb is in love with Helen Cather."
I was, of course, incredulous.
"But that's absurd," I answered; "that's worse than any of Bomb's best stories."
"It's true, all the same," he assured me. "He came in this afternoon. He can think of nothing else. His stories have for the moment all deserted him. He told me that he's been awake three nights thinking of her. He says that he loved her the first moment he saw her. He says that he's never loved a woman before, which is, I expect, true enough, and that he's going to marry her."
"Well, that last isn't true, anyway," I answered. "Miss Cather hated him at first sight."
My impression that night was that this was simply one of Bomb's exuberant, romantic fancies, and that it would pass away from his heart and brain as quickly as many of his stories had done. I was, of course, completely wrong.