The man stooped and examined her face.

She said, while he gazed at her:  “Edgar!...  See—­the wrist watch,” and held up her arm, from which the wide sleeve of her mantle slipped away.

And the man said:  “Is it you?”

She said:  “Come with me.  I will look after you.”

The man answered glumly: 

“I have no money—­at least not enough for you.  And I owe you a lot of money already.  You are an angel.  I’m ashamed.”

“What do you mean?” Christine protested.  “Do you forget that you gave me a five-pound note?  It was more than enough to pay the hotel....  As for the rest, let us not speak of it.  Come with me.”

“Did I?” muttered the man.

She could feel the very clement Virgin smiling approval of her fib; it was exactly such a fib as the Virgin herself would have told in a quandary of charity.  And when a taxi came round the corner, she knew that the Virgin disguised as a taxi-driver was steering it, and she hailed it with a firm and yet loving gesture.

The taxi stopped.  She opened the door, and in her sombre mantle and bright trailing frock and glinting, pale shoes she got in, and the military Father Christmas with much difficulty and jingling and clinking insinuated himself after her into the vehicle, and banged to the door.  And at the same moment one of the soldiers from the Hostel ran up: 

“Here, mate!...  What do you want to take his money from him for, you damned w——?”

But the taxi drove off.  Christine had not understood.  And had she understood, she would not have cared.  She had a divine mission; she was in bliss.

“You did not seem surprised to meet me,” she said, taking Edgar’s rough hand.

“No.”

“Had you called out my name—­’Christine’?”

“No.”

“You are sure?”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps you were thinking of me?  I was thinking of you.”

“Perhaps.  I don’t know.  But I’m never surprised.”

“You must be very tired?”

“Yes.”

“But why are you like that?  All these things?  You are not an officer now.”

“No.  I had to resign my commission—­just after I saw you.”  He paused, and added drily:  “Whisky.”  His deep rich voice filled the taxi with the resigned philosophy of fatalism.

“And then?”

“Of course I joined up again at once,” he said casually.  “I soon got out to the Front.  Now I’m on leave.  That’s mere luck.”

She burst into tears.  She was so touched by his curt story, and by the grotesquerie of his appearance in the faint light from the exterior lamp which lit the dial of the taximeter, that she lost control of herself.  And the man gave a sob, or possibly it was only a gulp to hide a sob.  And she leaned against him in her thin garments.  And he clinked and jingled, and his breath smelt of beer.

Chapter 25