said again upwards, if I could find men like that, that would be just heaven . . . where there is no marrying. . . . But, of course, she went on almost resignedly, he would not be faithful to you. . . . And then: one would have to stand it. . . .
She sat up so suddenly in her chair that beside her, too, Major Perowne nearly jumped out of his wicker-work, and asked if he had come back. . . . She exclaimed:
"No, I'd be damned if I would. . . . I'd be damned, I'd be damned, I'd be damned if I would. . . . Never. Never. By the living God!"
She asked fiercely of the agitated major:
"Has Christopher got a girl in this town? . . . You'd better tell me the truth!"
The major mumbled:
"He . . . No . . . He's too much of a stick. . . . He never even goes to Suzette's. . . . Except once to fetch out some miserable little squit of a subaltern who was smashing up Mother Hardelot's furniture. . . . "
He grumbled:
"But you shouldn't give a man the jumps like that! . . . Be conciliatory, you said. . . . " He went on to grumble that her manners had not improved since she had been at Yssingueux-les-Pervenches, . . . and then went on to tell her that in French the words yeux des pervenches meant eyes of periwinkle blue. And that was the only French he knew, because a Frenchman he had met in the train had told him so and he had always thought that if her eyes had been periwinkle blue . . . "But you're not listening. . . . Hardly polite, I call it," he had mumbled to a conclusion. . . .
She was sitting forward in her chair still clenching her hand under her chin at the thought that perhaps
