“Then he nodded again and drew something from his bosom and put it on his head. “Look,” he said. “Pretty.”

It was a beret of pillar-box red. Through the stupor that was slowly mounting and encompassing his mind Basil recognised it. Prudence had worn it jauntily on the side of her head, running across the Legation lawn with the Panorama of Life under her arm. He shook the old fellow roughly by the shoulder.

“Where did you get that?”

“Pretty.”

“Where did you get it?”

“Pretty had. It came in the great bird. The white woman wore it. On her head like this.” He giggled weakly and pulled it askew over his glistening pate.

“But the white woman, Where is she?”

But the headman was lapsing into a coma. He said “Pretty” again and turned up sightless eyes.

Basil shook him violently. “Speak, you old fool. Where is the white woman?”

The headman grunted and stirred; then a flicker of consciousness revived in him. He raised his head. “The white woman? Why, here,” he patted his distended paunch. “You and I and the big chiefs – we have just eaten her.”

Basil had just eaten Prudence, his lover. No more of this incident is mentioned in this book.

But according to JB, “She was forewarned, you know; Basil did say that he’d like to eat her and Pru did reply that he shall.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Of course it is. You can’t really blame me if I said I wanted to strangle you with your hair like Porphyria, and you said I shall, and then I did it, can you? I mean, I did warn you.”

“… are you planning to strangle me anytime soon with my hair?”

“Not at the moment, no, but I will do it if you wish, dear.”

JB has some serious sadomasochistic tendencies going on. I should probably feel frightened rather than amorous about this.