I began to protest, but she went on tonelessly: “You don’t understand. I came to warn you because you are a good man. You are, aren’t you? I’m sorry I was led into laughing at you that night. He pinched my arm when I didn’t laugh. But I must stand by Julian. He is my man, good or bad. You see? He has been kind to me in his way. He loves me. I must go back to him at once. If you make me promise not to tell him about the police, I won’t. I won’t tell him anyway, I think. He must go to prison. It is time, because he will do more murders. I hate murders. But I will go with him to prison. And that will make it all right between Julian and me. Good-bye.” It was good-bye. I knew it was no use arguing. With some women one doesn’t know when it’s any good or not, with a few one does. They’re the ones who count. I could hold her by force, of course--for her own good. Dear God, the lies we can tell ourselves! If I held her by force from going back to Julian Raphael it would not have been so much for her own good as for mine. I hated her going, I wanted her. But she must do as she thought right. Everyone must always, in spite of everything. I’m glad I’ve never married, Hilary, I would have made a mess of it just by always seeing my wife’s point of view. I saw Manana downstairs to the door. It was raining the deuce, and the difference between twilight and night was about the same as that between a man of colour and a nigger. Manana and I stood close together in the open doorway. It was good-bye. I said: “Perhaps they will let you off. I will do my best. Come to me for help later on. Good-bye, Manana. Thank you.” She smiled. The first and last smile I ever saw light that face. “I must never see you again,” she said, and then the laughter of Julian Raphael tore the smile from her face. My rooms, as you know, are in Curzon Street: at the rather grubby end where Curzon Street, as though finally realising that it is deprived of the residential support of the noble family of that name, slopes helplessly down to a slit in a grey wall called Lansdowne Passage. I don’t know if you ever have occasion to go through there. When it is dark in London it is darker in Lansdowne Passage. It leads, between Lansdowne House and the wreck of Devonshire House, to Berkeley Street. There is a vertical iron bar up the middle of each opening, which I’m told were originally put there to prevent highwaymen making a dash through the Passage to the open country round Knightsbridge. Against that vertical iron bar leant Julian Raphael. I remember he had a pink shirt on. Our young dandy always showed a stretch of cuff. Between us and him there was one of those very tall silver-grey lamp-posts. You could see him round the edge of it, a black lean lounging shape. And that pink shirt. “Manana, I followed you!” he cried. And he laughed. The girl whispered frantically to me: “Get in, get in, get in!”