She shook with soft laughter. "Oh, George, some nice steady-going woman--like I used to be--ought to adopt you.... Why, you stupid, as if I wasn't _willing_ him to speed up, as you call it, with every particle that's in me, if only I can manage to be somewhere at hand when he gets there!" I gave her a quick look. "Do you mean that you're going to slip over to France after all?" I demanded. "No. Wasn't thinking of it. As far as I know at present I shall just stay here. But," she said meaningly, "if I were going anywhere it wouldn't be France." "Where would it be?" "Belgium." "Belgium's about the last place anybody with his war-experience would go to for a holiday." "What, Antwerp in August?" "I don't see. Sorry." "Aren't they holding the Olympic games there?" "_Ah!..._ So you think they might draw him?" "I didn't say so. I don't know as a matter of fact that I should go to Antwerp either. But you once asked me whether I thought I could bring him by just sitting still and loving him. Well"--a victorious smile--"I almost believe I could--now. But I shouldn't cut him sandwiches--now. I shouldn't be just somebody he remembered when he was at a loose end--now. I'd have him keen, George-old-Thing. He'd think anything I gave him a devil of a favour. Look at that wise young minx with the garters there; I'd have him to heel as she has her boy. Look, she's having a cocktail. Order me a cocktail, please." "Which? Martini? Manhattan? Bronx?" "I dunno. Never tasted one in my life. But I'm not too proud to learn. And--Geordie"--she shot a sidelong glance at me--"I've half a mind to begin practising on you!" "Well--if that will keep you from practising on anybody else----" "You think you'd be safe, George?" "Wretchedly safe." All at once the hectic manner seemed to fall from her. A little incision appeared for a moment between her brows. She pressed it away again with her fingers. "I suppose so," she said quietly. "You can't say ours isn't an extraordinary relation. It's safe to say there's nothing like it in this room." Nor anywhere else, I thought; and I was glad to think so. I am an average, more or less straight-living man, with a bias towards virtue rather than the other way; but almost any relation, it seemed to me, was to be preferred to this unnatural inhibition that had so singularly little to do with virtue. Allow me, as a man who possibly has been nearer to these things than you have, to give you a little advice. Avoid, by all means in your power, contact with a man who has put over the reversing-gear of his life as Derwent Rose had done. He will land you in his own net. Unless you are more magnificently steady than I, even when it comes to your relations with an admirable woman you will find yourself interfered with at every step you take. Even the evil that you would you do not, and the good that you would not, that you do.