from it even than usual. Nor had my senses deceived me.
“Bertie,” he said in a hollow voice, skidding on the fourth crotchet from the left as you enter the second bar and producing a distressing sound like the death-rattle of a sand-eel, “I’ve seen her!”
“Seen her?” I said. “What, Elizabeth Vickers? How do you mean, you’ve seen her? She isn’t down here.”
“Yes, she is. I suppose she’s staying with relations or something. I was down at the post office, seeing if there were any letters, and we met in the doorway.”
“What happened?”
“She cut me dead.”
He started “ The Rosary ” again, and stubbed his finger on a semiquaver.
“Bertie,” he said, “you ought never to have brought me here. I must go away.”
“Go away? Don’t talk such rot. This is the best thing that could have happened. It’s a most amazing bit of luck, her being down here. This is where you come out strong.”
“She cut me.”
“Never mind. Be a sportsman. Have another dash at her.”
“She looked clean through me.”
“Well, don’t mind that. Stick at it. Now, having got her down here, what you want,” I said, “is to place her under some obligation to you. What you want is to get her timidly thanking you. What you want—”
“What’s she going to thank me timidly for?”