Almost the first thing which Toby said to me when we met was, “Imogen is in London again.”
Even to Toby to whom this could never mean as much as to the rest of us, it seemed the only thing of immediate importance; to me, more than as pleasure or pain, though, of course, it was both of these, it came as a breaking away of near memories.
For some moment of time the bar where we stood was frozen in space; the handles, the slopped wood, the pallid man beyond them lost perspective; “If you like our beer tell your friends; if you don’t tell us” stood as cut in stone, the ordainment of priest kings, immeasurably long ago; the three years or a little more that stood between now and that grim evening in April fell, unhonoured, into the remote past and there was no sound from the street.
Then, instantly almost, the machine fell to its work again and I said as though nothing had intervened between his voice and mine:
“Was she with him?”
For even now, after three years or more, I could not easily say his name; I spoke of him, as slatternly servants will speak of their master, impersonally. And indeed it was thus I thought of him; the name was an insignificant thing labelling an event. Toby understood something of t............