This was strange.  He looked down on her with sudden respect.  For she was using almost the same words that his mother had spoken often enough when he had sat beside her bed on those nights when she could not sleep for the argument of phantom passions in her room, and she opened her eyes suddenly after having lain with them closed for a time, and found him grieving for her.  “Dear, you must not be so sorry for me.  Hold my hand, but do not feel too sorry for me.  It only makes it worse for me.  Truly, I ask for my own sake, not for yours.  Do you not see?  When all the ripples have gone from the pond I shall forget I ever threw that stone....”  Was it not strange that this girl, on whose mind the dew was not yet dry, should speak the same wise words that had been found fittest by a woman who had been educated by a tragic destiny?  But of course she was as wise as she was beautiful.  His thought of Marion became fatigued and resentful because it had made him forget the marvel of his Ellen.

“Forgive me,” he murmured.

“Of course I forgive you.”

“What, before I have told you what it is I want forgiveness for?”

“I have it in my mind I will always forgive you for anything you do.”

“That’s a brave undertaking!”

They laughed into each other’s faces through the dusk.  “Well, I’ve always hankered after a chance to show I’m brave.  When I was a wee thing I used to cry because I couldn’t be a soldier.  I had the finest collection of tin soldiers you can imagine.  A pairfect army.  Mother used to stint herself to buy them for me....  Oh, dear!  Oh, dear!” He felt her tremble again.  “Well, we’ve come to the end of George the Fourth Bridge.  Is it not awful inappropriate to call a street after George the Fourth when it is nearly all bookshops?”

She did not name the street which they were entering.  Indeed, though her breathing was tense, lethargy seemed to have fallen on her, and she slackened her pace and made him halt with her at the kerb, where they were necessarily jostled by the press of squalid people, lurching with drink or merely with rough manners, that streamed up and down this street of topless houses whose visible lower storeys were blear-eyed with windows broken or hung with rags.

“Isn’t this the High Street?”

“Yes.  And I wish we were here any time but this.  Think if this was a fine Saturday morning now, and we were going up to the Castle to see the Highlanders drilling.”

“Didn’t you say the Public Health Office was opposite the Cathedral?”

“I did so.  But dear knows it was ridiculous of me to drag you here.  Most likely her number will not be there at all.  After all, she was only taken away this morning, and the doctor said there’d be no change.  He said I would be just a fule to worry.”

He guided her across the road and looked for the office among the shops that faced the dark shape of the Cathedral, while she hung on his arm.  “You will be angry with me for dragging you for nothing out into this awful part.”