Jacques in England! And at such a time! Here was the past, which I had hoped was buried forever, come back to confront me. It seems that everything we do remains forever; there is no escaping from it. I can remember Violetta quoting something like this once: The moving finger writes And having writ moves on Nor all thy piety nor wit Can lure it back to cancel half a line Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it. Violetta always liked poetry and often quotes it to great effect. I thought of this poem now. How true it was. Many a trouble had she covered up for me throughout our childhood, and my affair with Jacques was the biggest of them all. She had helped me to emerge from it with as little discredit as possible. The war had helped, for I returned just at that time when it was declared and people had other things with which to occupy their minds than the affairs of an erring wife. Yes, I was indeed impulsive.
