“And I had seemed so like winning, too! For, ten days before he was to sail, he had insisted on taking me away from London, saying that London was getting between us and that we must go away into the country, just to breathe and to love. That is not, of course, how he put it, Raymond, but that was his meaning, and very, very happy it made me. Imagine! Seven days we spent together in a funny sweet little inn under the shadows of those toy hills which are called mountains in Wales; but I will not tell you about those days, for they are a very intimate memory, and even if I did you could not put them into your story, for your editor would wonder if you were mad, saying that the British public will put up with much but not with as much as that. But, all the same, they were a wonderful seven days, and as we sat silently facing each other in the train back to London, silent because there was too much to talk about, I knew I had won. There were three days left. “In London he dropped me at my house, and he was to return in the evening to take me out to dinner. But he was back within an hour, and when I went downstairs I found him pacing impatiently up and down the drawing-room. He told me that his orders had been changed; he had to go to Paris first, and then take ship at Marseilles. “‘To Paris!’” I said, not understanding. “‘Yes, to-night, in two hours,’” he said quickly, shyly. He was embarrassed at the idea of a possible scene. And, oh, those frozen blue eyes, those frozen blue eyes of pro-consular men! He must go at once, he said. He shook both my hands; and he held them a little while in that pathetic attempt at tenderness which sometimes overtakes Englishmen when they are eager to go and do something else. He would write to me, he said. He mumbled something about my being a darling, but I simply hadn’t a word. It was all just as though nothing had ever happened to us, as though we had never been to the little Welsh inn, or played and laughed and loved, as though he had never begged me to run my fingers through his hair because I had said his hair was a garden where golden flowers grew. Englishmen are very odd, Raymond. He was going away! But he would write to me, he said, and would be back in twelve months or so ... and he almost forgot to kiss me. But what are kisses? “Now this is where, Raymond, in writing this story, your craftsmanship must come in. You must be very clever just here, Raymond. You must manage to convey that, though I was not a bad loser by nature, I was terribly wretched for a time: that I simply didn’t exist. You must fill in the gap with some fine prose and acute observation--the horrible gap between the time he went away and the time when I again began to take notice of life. You can’t both be loyal to me and true to life, Raymond, so you had better be romantic about it. You will find it quite easy to be romantic about other people’s troubles.