But they, those two poor stricken souls, could yet be spared that knowledge. It was dreadfully too much that they knew the song, and that he had known it, and that he had sung it that summer's evening up the River. The rest of the horror might still be kept from them. "All together--chorus," cried Aschael jubilantly: "'Why--don't--you marry the girl? D'you want--the poor thing--to die? You can see--she's gone--upon--you By the twin--kle in--her eye! Do--the trick--for se--ven-and-six, Take--the tip--of a pal-- I've--been--watching your game-- Why don't you marry the gal?'" Then I felt that last desperate hope of mine slipping away--Aschael was beginning to forget the words, and to make out with gestures and grimaces, leaving gaps through which there started up thin and tinkling and facetious horrors.... I saw that Kato had realised; I had once come upon him and Archie drinking whisky and soda together; his eyes met mine curiously, and I fancied his lips shaped the name: "Merridew?" This next I have from Billy Izzard. He tells me that all at once I sprang to my feet and cried, in a huge and boisterous voice that drowned everything else, "Never mind, Aschael--chorus--all together!--" "'Why--don't--you marry the girl? D'you want--the poor thing to die? You can see--she's gone--upon you By the twin-kle in--her eye! La--la la--sing up! Take the tip--go on, Aschael!-- I've been--watching your game-- Why don't you marry the gal?'" Clapping my hands, Billy says, I fell back into a chair. But I was out of it again in an instant. I was not to escape so easily as all that. Kato had his finger on the lever; I cannot say how, nor whether, he guessed what was to come, nor whether he tried to avert it; if he did, he was too late. From that damnable box there came a long catarrhal wheeze--high-pitched and tenor the words came: "Now, Evie--Evie's turn--make her sing, mother--bosh--of course she's going to sing!----" I was neither at Aunt Angela's party nor yet in a boat on a summer's evening up the River. How can I tell you where I was? In what drawing-room? Sitting on what chair? Surrounded by what company?... I swear to you that I have seen a place I have never seen, been in a place I never in my life was in. I can describe to you a family gathering with Mrs Merridew there, and her son there, and Evie there, and myself never, never there. I have seen, whether they ever existed or not, French windows opening on a lawn, and a slackened tennis-net beyond, and an evening flush in the sky, and the air dark with homing rooks.... Nothing will persuade me that these eyes are in fact ignorant of that quiet home of Archie Merridew's--and yet Guildford is a place in which I have never been.