"You have been in love?"
Summertown hesitated and then answered quietly:
"Oh, well, yes, I suppose so."
"Tell me about it."
Lady Barbara, watching his face as he gazed into Madame Hilary's eyes, became conscious of a change in expression; Summertown might have been drunk. His eyes were glazed, his features set and his forehead moist; he spoke cautiously, too, as though fearful of a trip in articulation.
"It sounds rather sordid," he began diffidently. "She was an awful pretty girl—in a shop. Flower-shop. I palled up with her.... I expect you'll think me an awful cad; I never meant to marry her. It would have meant such a hell of a row at home.... To do myself justice, I told her that. She knew who I was; she said that didn't matter.... The thing lasted for a year—nearly. And most of the time I went through the agony of the damned. Ask any one who thinks he knows me; you'll be told I haven't a soul to save and I'm the village idiot and all that sort of thing. All I know is—I wouldn't go through it again. I loved the girl; and I always felt that she was all right till I came along—and then I corrupted her; and though I sweated to get her to marry me, we both knew it would be God's own failure.... And the end was the most sordid part of the whole business. When I lay awake at night—I did, honest—thinking I'd dragged her half-way to Hell, another feller turned up. Number One. I was Number Two—or Ten—or Twenty.... That was nineteen-eleven, but, if you sat up till midnight telling me how rotten she was, you wouldn't be able to make me forget her. Wish to God you could!... But we were dam' well man and wife for a twelvemonth."
He laughed jerkily and grew restless, as though he were looking for the usual cigarette. Lady Barbara felt an overbalancing pull and discovered that she had been making her fingers meet in the soft flesh of Sonia Dainton's arm. Madame Hilary was triumphing. None of them could say when Jack Summertown had passed under her influence; apart from his pallor and glazed eyes, he had not changed; but there was a collective, sympathetic shudder through the room, as he told his stunted romance in characteristic colloquialisms. "Hell of a row at home.... A year—nearly.... All I know is—I wouldn't go through it again.... And then I corrupted her.... Dam' well man and wife for a twelvemonth...." And then the jerky, cynical laugh. It was Jack Summertown's manner of describing an unsuccessful meeting at Hawthorn Hill.
"You cannot forget her—but you will find some one else?" The unmodulated voice was pitiless.
"Oh, generally speaking, yes. I mean, one wants to keep the jolly old family going. But I've not got much time with this war."