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"Was he the chap who sells the stuff you make the mittens out of?..." "Oh, no, Jimphy, he was a photographer. We're all to have our photographs in the Daily Reflexion...." "Except Mr. Boltt?" Henry asked maliciously. "No, Mr. Boltt's to be in it too. Holding wool. I've been photographed in three different positions ... beginning to knit a mitten, half-way through a mitten, and finishing a mitten.
If you love Cecily, she demands the whole of your life. Every bit of it. She consumes you.... Oh, I know this sounds like a penny dreadful, Quinny, but it's true. I've asked her to run away with me, but she won't come. She says she hates scandal and she likes her social position. My God, I feel sick when I see Jimphy with her ... like a damned big lobster putting his ... his claws about her.
Jimphy left them after lunch. He was awfully sorry, old chap, to have to tear himself away and all that, but the fact was he had an appointment ... an important appointment ... and of course a chap had to keep an important appointment.... "We'll forgive you, Jimphy!" Lady Cecily said, and then he went away, begging Henry to remember that they must go to the Empire together one night.
"I couldn't write a book to save my life!..." "No?" said Mr. Boltt, smiling in the way of one who says to himself, "God help you, my poor fellow, God help you!" "I suppose it's all a question of knack," Jimphy continued. "You get into the way of it and you can't stop. Sometimes a tune gets into my head and I have to keep on humming it or whistling it.
"I can't think what you all want to talk about a play for. I never see anything in 'em to talk about!" Jimphy murmured sleepily. "Go to sleep, Jimphy, dear. Well wake you when we get to the Savoy...." "Always ragging a chap!" Jimphy muttered, and then closed his eyes.
She was sitting forward, looking intently at the stage, and as he watched her, she laughed and turned to Jimphy as if she would share her pleasure with him, but Jimphy, lying back in his stall, was fiddling with his programme, utterly uninterested. She glanced up at the box, her eyes meeting his, and smiled at him. "Who is it?" said Mary, leaning towards him.
He had not troubled to visit her in London ... he could have found time to do so, had he been anxious to see her ... but he had not the wish. He had not written to her about Jimphy ... he could not bring himself to do that ... and the thought that she might wish to see him did not stir his mind.
If only he were a youngster once again!... They drank their tea, while Jimphy discoursed on the war. Henry had entered Cecily's house with a feeling of alarm, wondering whether she would be friendly to him, wondering whether he would be able to look into her eyes and not care ... and now he knew that he did not care.
Henry nodded his head, but did not speak. "Once when I'd been begging Cecily to go away with me, Jimphy walked into the room ... and I had to pretend to be talking about some nasturtiums that Cecily had grown. I felt like a cad. That's what's rotten about loving another man's wife.
"Of course, she can't see me," he said. He tried to interest himself in the traffic of the stage, but his thoughts continually wandered to the woman in the box above him. "She's the loveliest woman I've ever seen," he said to himself. She turned to greet them as they entered the box. "Come and sit beside me, Gilbert!" she said. "Mr. Quinn ... oh, you don't know Jimphy, do you?"
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