He took her arm and led her up the square.  She had to remind him that his way to town lay in the other direction.

“Of course—­how stupid of me!” he said, with a little loud laugh.  “I’m so used to going the other way with you—­of course; it’s the other way to the bus.  Will you come along with me?  I am so awfully sorry it’s happened like this....”

They took the street to the bus terminus.

This time Elsie bore no signs of having gone through interior struggles.  If she detected anything unusual in his manner she made no comment, and he, seeing her calm, began to talk less recklessly through silences.  By the time they reached the bus terminus, nobody, seeing the pallid-faced man without an overcoat and the large ample-skirted girl at his side, would have supposed that one of them was ready to sink on his knees for thankfulness that he had, as he believed, saved the other from a wildly unthinkable danger.

They mounted to the top of the bus, Oleron protesting that he should not miss his overcoat, and that he found the day, if anything, rather oppressively hot.  They sat down on a front seat.

Now that this meeting was forced upon him, he had something else to say that would make demands upon his tact.  It had been on his mind for some time, and was, indeed, peculiarly difficult to put.  He revolved it for some minutes, and then, remembering the success of his story of a sudden call to town, cut the knot of his difficulty with another lie.

“I’m thinking of going away for a little while, Elsie,” he said.

She merely said, “Oh?”

“Somewhere for a change.  I need a change.  I think I shall go to-morrow, or the day after.  Yes, to-morrow, I think.”

“Yes,” she replied.

“I don’t quite know how long I shall be,” he continued.  “I shall have to let you know when I am back.”

“Yes, let me know,” she replied in an even tone.

The tone was, for her, suspiciously even.  He was a little uneasy.

“You don’t ask me where I’m going,” he said, with a little cumbrous effort to rally her.

She was looking straight before her, past the bus-driver.

“I know,” she said.

He was startled.  “How, you know?”

“You’re not going anywhere,” she replied.

He found not a word to say.  It was a minute or so before she continued, in the same controlled voice she had employed from the start.

“You’re not going anywhere.  You weren’t going out this morning.  You only came out because I appeared; don’t behave as if we were strangers, Paul.”

A flush of pink had mounted to his cheeks.  He noticed that the wind had given her the pink of early rhubarb.  Still he found nothing to say.

“Of course, you ought to go away,” she continued.  “I don’t know whether you look at yourself often in the glass, but you’re rather noticeable.  Several people have turned to look at you this morning.  So, of course, you ought to go away.  But you won’t, and I know why.”