Nicky was not impetuous.  He found Desmond in her studio working on the last drawing of the Moving Fortress, with the finished model before her.  That gave him his opening, and he approached shyly and tentatively.

Desmond put on an air of complete absorption in her drawing; but she smiled.  A pretty smile that lifted the corners of her mouth and made it quiver, and gave Nicky a queer and unexpected desire to kiss her.

He went on wanting to know what his debt was—­not that he could ever really pay it.

“Oh, you foolish Nicky,” Desmond said.

He repeated himself over and over again, and each time she had an answer, and the answers had a cumulative effect.

“There isn’t any debt.  You don’t pay anything—­”

“I didn’t do it for that, you silly boy.”

“What did I do it for?  I did it for fun.  You couldn’t draw a thing like that for anything else.  Look at it—­”

—­“Well, if you want to be horrid and calculating about it, think of the lunches and the dinners and the theatre tickets and the flowers you’ve given me.  Oh, and the gallons and gallons of petrol.  How am I ever to pay you back again?”

Thus she mocked him.

“Can’t you see how you’re spoiling it all?”

And then, passionately:  “Oh, Nicky, please don’t say it again.  It hurts.”

She turned on him her big black looking-glass eyes washed bright, each with one tear that knew better than to fall just yet.  He must see that she was holding herself well in hand.  It would be no use letting herself go until he had forgotten his Moving Fortress.  He was looking at the beastly thing now, instead of looking at her.

“Are you thinking of another old engine?”

“No,” said Nicky.  “I’m not thinking of anything.”

“Then you don’t want me to do any more drawings?”

“No.”

“Well then—­I wonder whether you’d very much mind going away?”

“Now?”

“No.  Not now.  But soon.  From here.  Altogether.”

“Go?  Altogether?  Me?  Why?”

He was utterly astonished.  He thought that he had offended Desmond past all forgiveness.

“Because I came here to be alone.  To work.  And I can’t work.  And I want to be alone again.”

“Am I—­spoiling it?”

“Yes.  You’re spoiling it damnably.”

“I’m sorry, Desmond.  I didn’t mean to.  I thought—­” But he hadn’t the heart to say what he had thought.

She looked at him and knew that the moment was coming.

It had come.

She turned away from the table where the Moving Fortress stood, threatening her with its mimic guns, and reminding Nicky of the things she most wanted him to forget.  She withdrew to her crouching place at the other end of the studio, among the cushions.

He followed her there with slow, thoughtful steps, steps full of brooding purpose and of half-unconscious meaning.