“Since yesterday morning. In other days I used to prescribe for you, I’ve even pulled you out of one or two tight corners for which posterity is likely to be more grateful to me than you are. Shoo! Shoo! Shoo! Seniores priores. I’m doing the talking. Well, you’ve always had the sense and justice to admit that you wouldn’t have got into eighty per cent. of those same tight corners, if you’d followed my orders earlier. D’you remember the man in Kipling who always prophesied trouble in the Balkans in the spring? It was a fairly safe shot. I always seem to prophesy a nervous breakdown in about a fortnight’s time for you. Before you go to bed this night, I’m going to overhaul you; and then you’re going away—not for my sake, nor for yours, but for your young woman’s. You’re no use to her, if you smash up; and you’re going to smash up, unless you take in sail. What’s the trouble? I left a message last night to say she was out of danger.”
“And, before that, you sent me off to have a nice, bright dinner... I tumbled across that swine Gaymer, and you may be amused to hear that we dined together. Gaymer had never suspected anything till that moment; he appreciated that there was a certain coolness and he was leaving her to come to her senses! Now....”
Eric jumped up and shut the door, conscious that he was scoring bad marks against himself by his restlessness but hardly caring to keep up pretences any longer.
“Well?” said Gaisford.
“I don’t know... He swears he’s in love with her, wants to marry her. And he’s made up his mind to see her.”
“I shall have something to say about that for the next three weeks.”
“And by then the engagement will be announced. The judge told me he was going away to-morrow, but as soon as he comes back....”
“What’s troubling you, then?”
Eric continued to pace up and down between the windows and the door, staring at the carpet, locking and unlocking his fingers behind his back and trying to find words for the new doubt which Ivy had not resolved even when she promised herself to him the night before:
“I’m not easy in my mind... I don’t know... Does a woman ever break her first lover’s spell? I seem uncertain of everything.”