"God only knows," I groaned, "what time we'll get to Ghent!"
"He does," she said. "He knows perfectly well we shall get there by half-past seven."
And we did.
It was dark when we turned into the Place d'Armes and drew up before the long, grey Hôtel de la Poste. I jumped out and stood by the kerb to give Viola my hand.
"But—" she said, "I know this place."
"You ought to."
I don't know where she expected us to go. She still sat in the car as if held there by the shock of recognition. She ignored my outstretched hand.
"You'd better take your things," she said at last, "if you want to get out here. I'm going on to look for Jimmy."
I had then my first full sense of what I was in for. I saw that she was perfectly prepared to throw me over, to dump me down here or anywhere else and go on by herself with the car and the chauffeur that were, or ought to have been, mine.
She didn't care if I was Special Correspondent to the Morning Standard, and she had that beastly chauffeur in her pocket all the time. (I discovered afterwards that she'd laid in food for him and hidden it in the locker under the front seat, so that they might be ready for any sort of adventure.) And yet in the very moment that I realized her disastrous obstinacy I found her intolerably pathetic.