She added pensively, "Reggie's quite changed. I suppose it's India."
I knew she didn't suppose anything of the sort. She thought the General had been telling him things; and I must confess I thought so too. Here, I may say at once, we did that kindly and honourable gentleman a wrong.
He came to us in great distress the next morning. He said Viola and Jevons were to have dined with them last night, only Reggie had declared he wouldn't have anything to do with Jevons. He didn't want to meet him if he could help it. He said, Couldn't they ask Viola without him? And they had asked Viola without him, and Viola had refused to come.
"And do you know" (he stared at us in a sort of helpless horror) "he hasn't been to see her yet."
The poor General went away quite depressed. He lingered with me on the doorstep a moment. "I'm afraid, Furnival," he said, "Reggie's going to make it very awkward for us."
He did make it awkward.
It might have been discreet to have put off our dinner. But I knew that Norah wouldn't hear of it; all the more if Reggie was going to make it awkward. You don't suppose one Thesiger was going to knuckle under to another. It wasn't their way. They were loyal to the last degree, but loyalty was another matter. And if it came to that she was loyal to her sister.
I shall never forget that dinner. I shall never forget Viola's coming in with Jevons behind her.
She was, as I think I've said, a beautifully-made woman, with long limbs and superb shoulders, and a way of holding her small head high. Well, she came in (they were a little late) with her head higher than ever, and with a sweep of her limbs, as if her crushed draperies (she was all in white) were blown backward by a wind; her gauze scarf billowed behind her as if it were wings or sails and the wind filled it. She was like the Victory of Samothrace; she was like a guardian and avenging angel; she was like a ship in full sail breasting a sea. Up to her eyes she was everything that was ever splendid and courageous and defiant.
But her eyes—there was a sort of scared grief in them.