Sally obeyed reluctantly.  In the heart of her was a dread of it; in her mind, the tardy admission that she was doing her duty, sacrificing at the altar upon which every woman at some time or other is compelled to make her offering.

In the little linoleum’d passage, known as the hall, Mr. Arthur was waiting for her.  He had exchanged his felt slippers for a pair of boots; round his neck he had wrapped an ugly muffler and a cap was perched jauntily on his head.  The impression that he gave Sally, of being confident of his success, stung her for a moment to resentment.  She determined to refuse him.  But that mood was only momentary.  When the door had closed behind them and they had begun to walk along the paved river path, the impression and its accompanying decision vanished.

Sally was a romantic—­that cannot be denied.  She could talk reverently about love in the abstract.  In her mind, it was not a condition into which one fell, as the unwary traveller falls into the ditch by the roadside, picking himself out as quickly as may be, or, in his weariness, choosing at least to sleep the night there and go on with his journey next morning.  In the heart of Sally, whether it were a pitfall or not, love was an end in itself.  She directed all her steps towards that destination, and any light of romance allured her.

That evening, walking up towards Kew Bridge, the lights of the barges lying in the stream, looking themselves like huddled reptiles seeking the warmth of each other’s bodies, the lights of the little buildings on the eyot, and the lamps of the bridge itself, all dancing quaint measures in the black water, brought to the susceptibility of Sally’s mind a sense of romance.  For the moment, until he spoke, she forgot the actual presence of Mr. Arthur.  The vague knowledge that some one was with her, stood for the indefinite, the unknown quantity whose existence was essential to the completion of the whole.

As they passed by the City Barge—­that little old-fashioned inn which faces the water on the river path—­she looked in through the windows.  There were bargemen, working men who lived near by, and others whose faces she had often seen as she had walked to her tram in the morning, all talking, laughing good-naturedly, some with the pewter pots pressed to their lips, head throwing slightly back, others enforcing a point with an empty mug on the bar counter.  And outside, ahead of them, the lean, gaunt willows, around whose very trunks the hard paving had been laid, shot up into the black sky like witches’ brooms that the wind was combing out.

Bright, cheerful lights glowed in every cottage window.  In some it was only the light of a fire that leaped a ruddy dance on the whitewashed walls, and caught reflections in the lintels of the windows.  In others it was a candle, in others a small oil lamp; but in all, looking through the windows as she passed, Sally saw some old man or woman seated over a fire.  There is romance, even in content.  Sally was half conscious of it, until Mr. Arthur spoke; then it whipped out, vanished—­a wisp of smoke that the air scatters.