“God, isn’t it! Difficult.... What? I mean, when you want to be ... well, when you want to live clean. We promised, oh God, yes! not to write, never to meet.... Must live clean, you see. What? There isn’t, when you come to think of it, any other way to live....”
“Guy says that....”
“Guy? Yes, but ... need guts like Guy’s, don’t you? What? Look here,” he suddenly waved the letter at me, “will you go out and keep Venice company for a moment? I mean, see what she’s doing? And I’ll see the doctor fellow and make him let me see Iris for a moment. Promise wiped out by approach of death.... What? I mean, lonely for her here.... Told me, last time I saw her that she was lonely. Hurts, loneliness. What? And then I find her in this hole....”
He thrust the letter into his gaping coat-pocket. I could see it there, that pencilled scrawl. Letters, letters, letters like radium-bombs, left lying about for years, then bursting. What fools men were, keeping letters ... travelling about with them, sticking them into their coat-pockets. Suppose Venice saw that letter ... just a few lines of it. Whether Iris lived or died ... suppose Venice saw just a few lines of that letter. For Venice....
“Napier,” I said.
He stared at me, extraordinarily handsome at that moment, and I remember thinking just then of what is always said, that women are not very attracted by good-looking men. But what is always said must be wrong.
“I say,” he said, “got a cigarette? What?”
“Napier,” I said, “give me that letter....”
“Or,” I said, “have two matches to your cigarette....”
A tiny smile fluttered round the thin quivering lips. “There’s no end to it,” he whispered, “is there? Once you begin. The nasty precautions....”