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?"