And she went on.  “Why couldn’t you have wired in the morning, then?  I could have caught that boat.”

“Because, my dear girl, he doesn’t want you to go out.”

“It doesn’t matter what he wants—­or thinks he wants—­I’m going.

“And what’s more,” she said, “you’ve got to take me.  That’s all you’ve gained by trying to stop me.”

I replied that nothing would induce me to take her out, that I’d promised
Jimmy she shouldn’t go.

She said that didn’t matter.  Jimmy’d know I couldn’t keep a silly promise like that, and if I wouldn’t take her she’d simply go by herself.

I tried to explain to her very gently that her going—­at all—­was out of the question.  She would do no good to anybody by going; she would annoy Jimmy most frightfully; untrained women were not wanted at the front.

Untrained?  She had got her certificate three days ago.  What did I suppose she had wanted it for—­if it wasn’t to go out with Jimmy if he went?

“You knew he was going, then?” I said.

“I knew he wanted to go.  But I didn’t think he’d go so soon.  I didn’t really think he’d go at all.  They told me I needn’t worry, that he hadn’t a chance.”

“Who told you?”

“Oh, everybody.  The General and Colonel Braithwaite and Charlie, and Bertie, and Reggie—­at least he told Norah—­and the people at the War Office and the Admiralty and the Embassies.”

“You went to them?  You went to the War Office?”

“I went everywhere where he did, or as near as I could get.  And they all told me the same thing—­he hadn’t a chance.  Not the ghost of a chance.  I really thought he hadn’t.  When you think of the men—­men who can do things, who are dying to go and are being kept back—­”

“You were helping him to go?” I said.  I saw a vision, or I tried to see it, a pathetic vision of Viola following poor Jimmy in his pursuit of secretaries and ambassadors, doing insane, impossible things to help him.

And then I saw Viola herself.  She was looking at me, with all her features tilted in that funny way she had.

“Well—­no,” she said; “I wasn’t exactly helping.”

“What were you doing, then?”

“I’m afraid I was trying to stop him.”

The sheer folly of it took my breath away.

“Surely,” I said, “if he hadn’t the ghost of a chance, it wasn’t necessary?”

“Well—­it was necessary, you see.  He’s so awfully clever.  He was very nearly off once or twice.  Only we just managed to get in in time.”

“Who got in in time?”

“Oh, it wasn’t only me, Furny, it was all of us.  We were all out trying to stop him—­Charlie and Reggie and Uncle Billy—­he pulled all the ropes—­we couldn’t do much.”

“But what—­what did General Thesiger do?”

“He didn’t ‘do’ anything.  He hadn’t got to.  He just said things.  Told them about Jimmy.”