"And that’s what I want to warn you against. It won’t go down, Billy, not from you."
"Oh, why do you make me explain things? Isn’t it perfectly clear? If you’re coming back among your old friends you’ll have to be, after what’s happened, more—how shall I put it?—more conservative, more like everybody else—than any one. _You_ can’t afford to have wild ideas, because people will only say that you re trying to drag us along the way you went yourself."
I renounced this discussion to ask the question that was chiefly on my mind.
"Vio, who’s that man that just went out?"
She threw me a look from the other side of the room.
"You heard. He’s—where can you catch on? He’s Emmy Fairborough’s brother."
"Emmy’s? Yes; Lord Fairborough and she are divorced, but what difference does that make?"
"I wasn’t thinking of Lady Fairborough. I forgot she had been a Stroud. I meant—I meant him."
"How should I know? It was to—to some low creature, an actress or something, the sort of thing men do when they’re young and—and—"
But I was not sure of being ready to tell her, so many things had to be formulated first. To gain more time I lighted another cigarette, and she spoke while I was doing it. Holding her own cigarette delicately, as if examining its spark, she said, with a staccato intonation that emphasized each word:
"Billy, you remember what I said earlier this afternoon? I can go back to our past and try to pick it up. I can’t go back to anything that comes after that past and—and before to-day. Do you understand? It’s more than three years since they told me your section was blown to pieces at Bourg-la-Comtesse. Most of your comrades were found—-and buried. You were missing; but missing with very little hope. As the weeks went by that little hope dwindled till there was none. Then came the news that—that all that time you had been—alive."
"He told me a story, or as much of it as I could listen to. But that’s not what I meant to speak about now. I want to say that—that I bury all that, deep, deep; only that I can’t do it unless you consent to bury—"
"Everything there’s been on your side. Is that it, Vio?"
"Not even if you’re ready to answer them; but I shall expect you not to ask questions of me."