I said I did. And that to remind me of it now was a joke in very questionable taste.
He said, "You never really knew the joke. I kept it from you most carefully. That little orgy of ours had just about cleared me out and the half-crown was my last half-crown. I had to go without any dinner for three days."
I mumbled something about his not meaning it.
He said, "Of course I meant it. Why, my dear chap, that's the joke!"
He stood there in the doorway, rocking with laughter. Then he saw our faces.
"I say, I wouldn't have told you if I'd thought it would harrow you like that. Thought you'd think it funny. It is funny."
I said, "No, my dear fellow, it's just missed being funny."
I put my hand on his shoulder and pushed him from the room. (I had seen Viola's face and I didn't want him to see it.) I led him gently downstairs with a hand still on his shoulder. He was a little grieved at giving pain when he had hoped to give pleasure.
At the bottom of the stairs he turned and looked at me with his ungovernable twinkle. "It was funny," he said. "But it wasn't half so funny, Furnival, as your face."
I found Viola sitting at my writing-table, with her arms flung out over it and her head bowed on them. And she was crying—crying with little soft sobs. I've said that I didn't think she could do it. And I didn't. She wasn't the sort that cries. I'm convinced she hadn't cried like this for years, perhaps never since she was a child.