“And yet you wanted to avoid me——­”

He nodded.  Ho knelt beside her, very white and earnest, with his hands clenched on his thighs.

“That was because I knew.  I didn’t think about it.  But I knew all right.  And I was afraid it would upset everything to care.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“Not caring for you.  Of course, I know all about life.  I’m young and I’ve never looked at a girl.  I’ve always realized that it would be natural to fall in love—­perhaps worse than most men—­and that if it was with a girl like Cosgrave’s it would be sheer damnation.  I’d have to fight it down.  But loving you is different.  It’ll make me stronger.  I’ll work harder and better because I love you.  I’ll do bigger things because of you.”

Her head was bowed over her primroses.  The sunlight falling between the trees on her wild brown hair kindled a smouldering colour in its disorder.  He watched her, fascinated and abashed by the knowledge that she was smiling to herself.  And suddenly, roughly like an ashamed boy, he took a grey and blood-stained rag from his inner pocket and tossed it into her lap.

“Do you remember that?”

She picked it up gingerly, amusedly.

“Is it a handkerchief, Robert?”

“Don’t you remember it?” he repeated with triumph, as though in some way he had beaten her.

For a moment she was silent.  And when she looked at him her eyes were no longer smiling.

“You kept it like that——?”

“I wouldn’t even wash it.  I hid it.  It’s got dirtier and dirtier.”

“It must be horribly germy, Robert.  We’ll wash it together.  As members of the medical profession we couldn’t have it on our conscience——­”

They laughed then, freely, out of the depth of their happiness.  She laid her hand in his and he bent his head to kiss it.

“You do trust me, Francey?”

“Trust you?”

“You don’t think it’s weak of me to love you?  You know I’ll pass my finals, don’t you—­that I’ll be all right?  People might think I hadn’t the right to love you till I was sure.  But, then, I am sure—­dead sure.”

“I’m sure, too.”  Her voice sounded brooding, a little husky.  She took his hand and laid it on her lap, spreading out the fingers as though to examine each one in turn.  “It’s a clever, beautiful hand, Robert—­much the most beautiful part of you.  It will do clever, wonderful things.  What will you do?”

(As though, he thought, his hands were something apart and she was inquiring deeper into what was vitally him.)

He told her.  It reassured him to go back to his foundations and to find them still standing.  He lost his tongue-tied clumsiness and spoke rapidly, clearly, with brief, strong gestures.  His haggard youth gave place to a forcible, aggressive maturity.  He was like an architect who had planned for every inch and stone of his masterpiece.  Next year he would pass his finals.  He would take posts as locum tenens whenever he could and keep his hospital connexions warm.  In five years he would save enough to specialize—­the throat gave wide opportunities for research.  There were men already interested in him who would send him work.  In ten years Harley Street—­if not before.