I think I shall sleep here to-night. There’s nothing the matter with the Chesterfield, and I can get some rugs from the hall. And I don’t think I shall go to ‘The Office’ to-morrow. If I do, they’re bound to act. Whereas, if I hold my hand for another day, S. will have had his money and cut his own throat. And, instead of a bad ten minutes, he’ll be broken on the wheel. After all, why shouldn’t he be broken? Others are. IV February 20th, 1929 At half-past nine last night I was sitting in the study with Bugle with only the fire for light, when I heard the front-door open and someone come in. Now that Jo’s gone, no one but I has a key, so Bugle and I got up and went to the door. It was Jo. Before I could speak her arms were round my neck. Her cheek, her lips were red-hot: her breath coming in spurts. “Sorry I’m late, my darling, but Daphne’s going away and she simply made me——” The sentence lost itself in a savage cough. I watched her sway to the sofa as if I was in a dream. . . . Then I closed the door and switched on the lights. Something was wrong, of course. Jo was seriously ill: her skin was burning like fire. Besides, she was talking nonsense. At least . . . For one thing only, I knew that Daphne Pleydell was in the South of France. Bugle, poor fellow, was almost out of his mind. He was all over Jo, scrambling and whining and pawing and licking her face. For an instant only Jo held him up in her arms. Her sleeves fell back, and I saw how wasted they were. Then— “You’re getting heavy,” she laughed, and the poor thin arms gave way and Bugle was in her lap. Sitting there, flushed, on the sofa, Jo talked and coughed and talked, while Bugle kept whimpering with pleasure and I stood watching and noting and thinking what I must do. She was wet, very wet, sopping—I could smell the reek of cloth—and very, very shabby. I knew the dress she was wearing—a blue coat and skirt. We chose it together at Bradley’s . . . ages ago. Her little hat was a ruin, and her toes were thrusting out of the wreck of a shoe. Her gloves were awful. One tress of her lovely hair was half-way down, and her face was pinched and peaked with two splashes of dusky red about her cheekbones. I rang for Mason and told him to send a maid to warm my bed and light a fire in the room: after that, to summon a doctor. Then I picked up Jo, still talking, and carried her up the stairs. . . . All that I did she suffered, just as one suffers the barber to cut one’s hair. She took no notice at all of anything, except that now and again she caught my cheek to hers. But she coughed and chattered—nonsense, without a break. By the time the doctor was there, I’d got her out of the bath and into bed. He said that she had pneumonia and sent for nurses and drugs. By eleven o’clock the women had taken over, and all that treatment can do was being done. . . .