March 22 + 

R⁠⸺ has an unpleasant habit of making some scarifying announcement drawing forth an explosive query from me and then lapsing at once into an Eleusinian silence: he appears to take a sensuous pleasure in the pause that keeps you expectant. I could forgive a man who keeps you on tenterhooks for two puffs in order to keep his pipe alight, but R⁠⸺ shuts up out of sheer self-indulgence and goes on gazing at the horizon with the eyes of a seer (he thinks) trying to cod me he sees a portent there only revealed to God’s elect. + 

I told him this in the middle of one of his luxurious silences. “I will tell you,” he said deliberately, “when we reach the Oratory.” (We were in Brompton Road.) + 

“Which side of it?” I enquired anxiously. “This or that?” + 

“That,” said he, “will depend on how you behave in the meantime.” + 