He waved a white thing covered with scrawled pencil-marks, and beside it I somehow saw that letter from a draughty house on a hill of strangled olives. But between the two came the vision of Venice destroyed. “I don’t want to read it, Napier. I quite understand. What on earth does it matter whether you knew or not, so long as you know now?” “Thinks a lot of you,” he said darkly. “Told me, last time I saw her....” He passed a hand over his mouth. I said: “But....” “Beastly,” he said, looking at me with enormous, dark surprise. “That’s what I feel. Beastly. As though my skin was a dirty shirt. Ever get that? I mean, here she’s dying, and I ... God, how one gets to know oneself! What? But I’d like you to see. I mean, since it’s you. She thinks a lot of you, I know she does. Thinks you’re nice. Funny how she says that, ‘nice.’ What? But what’s she want to lie for? Iris never lies. Never. That’s what beats me. I mean, why, to me? What? Go on, you’ll see....” Crumpled the letter was, but he had, in a sort of way, smoothed it out. I stared at it. I had to, for he was watching me with those ruined, pleading eyes. The greyhound unleashed.... “She’s dying.” I heard his voice from miles away. “You can’t tell me! She’s dying....” “She won’t die,” I said firmly, glad to look up from the letter. And, you know, I was quite certain at that moment that she wouldn’t die. The beloved of the favourite of the gods wouldn’t die. The favourites of the gods are not let off so easily. Oh, she wouldn’t die! It would be too easy to die. “The Marches are never let off anything....” I stared at the crumpled-looking thing in my hand. I didn’t read it. The poor devil was only showing me the thing because, at that lost moment, he was starving for understanding, for any one’s understanding, after these ten months of silence, of Venice-Napier-Iris silence.... I couldn’t, merely from the wretched fact of staring at the thing blankly, avoid the first few lines of that schoolgirl scrawl. “Napier, I have to go to a nursing-home for a few weeks’ rest. Napier, dear Napier! I’ve tried not to write, you know I have, just as we promised, but as we are never to meet again I’d like you to pray----” That is all I read, and there I stood, staring at that crumpled letter like an idiot. “As we are never to meet again....”