I said (Heaven knows why, except that I think I must have wanted Reggie's opinion of Jevons): "D'you think he's right about his own cowardice?"
Reggie said, "Ask me another. You can't tell. I only know I've seen men look like that and talk like that before an engagement."
Viola raised her head. Her voice came with the clear tremor of a bell:
"And did they funk?"
"They didn't run away, if that's what you mean. I daresay they felt like
Jevons. I've felt like Jevons myself."
Of course, knowing Jevons as I do now, I have sometimes fancied his talk about cowardice may have been mere bravado, the risk he took with Reggie. But here again I am not quite sure. I don't really know.
I am, however, entirely enlightened as to the game Viola played with me that night.
Jevons had stayed till half-past six. He had talked for two hours and a half. When I got up to go, Reggie suggested that his sister should come and dine with him somewhere in town and do a play afterwards.
She said, All right. She was on. And Furny would come too.
He said, of course I was coming too. That was what he had meant (it wasn't).
And in the end I went. I say in the end—for of course I protested. It was his one evening with his sister. But Viola's poor eyes signalled to me and implored me: "Don't leave me alone with him, whatever you do." She wanted to put off the dreadful moment that must come when he would ask her: "Where on earth did you pick up that shocking little bounder?"