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Wildherne came and sat down opposite her. No, he didn't want tea. He smoked a cigarette. He didn't look at her. As always when he was near her his heart hammered as though it would beat him down on to his knees before her. He could never be with her without instant memory of all the details of the intimacies of the six months that they had had together, as a drowning man is supposed to see his past life. Each separate detail flicked him with its sense of some loveliness lost for ever.

"Well, Wildherne—you've come to tell me about your engagement." She spoke very kindly; she liked him so much, and especially now that he was to belong to some other woman.

"Yes, I have."

"Very right and proper. I've met her, of course, but always with her sister, who is so pretty that she blinds one to anyone else."

How like Diana! At once to make Janet obscure and faded.

"Now tell me all about it, what you said to her, what she said to you, whether everyone is pleased (which, of course, everyone is), that you're happy, that she's happy—everything."