“‘Oh, no, no! Something--something perhaps you’d rather not be reminded of. But, do you remember when “The Eastern Princess” was running at the Clarion, and you flung up your part at a moment’s notice and weren’t seen again in London for six months?’
“I nodded. One of the landmarks in my life, that show was.
“‘Well,’ he said, ‘I was twenty-seven then. I’d just passed my first medical exam. in Ireland and had come up to London to open a practice in Richmond. I wasn’t badly off. I had good prospects. I was a sportsman. For eight years, ever since I had gone up to Oxford, I had been working really hard. All my friends told me that my innings was just going to begin. “You’ll have a wonderful time,” they said; “there’s no place like London.”’
“‘And then I fell in love with a very young and very unsophisticated girl, the daughter of a country parson whom I had got to know during a cricket tour. My friends did their very best to dissuade me. “It’s perfect madness,” they said, “you’re going to chuck your life away before you’ve started it. You could have a wonderful time. My dear chap, don’t be an ass!” And they took me to dancing clubs, and the heat and colour mounted to my brain. I began to agree with them: marriage was a fetter, a prison house. One didn’t chuck one’s life away.
“‘And then I heard a rumour about you. They were saying that you had gone away because--well, your name was coupled with the producer’s there. What was his name? Ah, yes, Clive Ferguson,--and they said that you were--well--er--very ill.
“‘It’ll surprise you, but I don’t think anything’s ever shocked me quite so much. I had heard you sing a great many times. I had made a sort of ideal of you, as young men will of actresses. You had become the embodiment to me of the gay, brightly coloured butterfly life of London; and, when I heard that rumour, your ruin seemed a criticism of the whole life you represented. That’s where it ends, I told myself. I thought of you as I had last seen you, singing in that great silver dress of yours. And then I thought of what life would be to you from then on. And I don’t know, but beneath its warmth and glitter that life seemed hard and cruel and revengeful. A month later I was married, and I’ve been very, very happy. And--well, it’s a bit late, I’m afraid, but if I can I should like to be able to do something for you now.’”