“Forget!  Move a little back, darling; they can’t see us here.  Kiss me!” She moved back, thrust her face forward so that he need not stoop, and put her lips up to his.  Then, feeling that she might swoon and fall over among the cans, she withdrew her mouth, leaving her forehead against his lips.  He murmured: 

“Was it all right when you got in last night?”

“Yes; I said good-bye for you.”

“Oh!  Noel—­I’ve been afraid—­I oughtn’t—­I oughtn’t—­”

“Yes, yes; nothing can take you from me now.”

“You have got pluck.  More than!”

Along whistle sounded.  Morland grasped her hands convulsively: 

“Good-bye, my little wife!  Don’t fret.  Goodbye!  I must go.  God bless you, Noel!”

“I love you.”

They looked at each other, just another moment, then she took her hands from his and stood back in the shadow of the milk-cans, rigid, following him with her eyes till he was lost in the train.

Every carriage window was full of those brown figures and red-brown faces, hands were waving vaguely, voices calling vaguely, here and there one cheered; someone leaning far out started to sing:  “If auld acquaintance—­” But Noel stood quite still in the shadow of the milk-cans, her lips drawn in, her hands hard clenched in front of her; and young Morland at his window gazed back at her.

2

How she came to be sitting in Trafalgar Square she did not know.  Tears had formed a mist between her and all that seething, summer-evening crowd.  Her eyes mechanically followed the wandering search-lights, those new milky ways, quartering the heavens and leading nowhere.  All was wonderfully beautiful, the sky a deep dark blue, the moonlight whitening the spire of St. Martin’s, and everywhere endowing the great blacked-out buildings with dream-life.  Even the lions had come to life, and stared out over this moonlit desert of little human figures too small to be worth the stretching out of a paw.  She sat there, aching dreadfully, as if the longing of every bereaved heart in all the town had settled in her.  She felt it tonight a thousand times worse; for last night she had been drugged on the new sensation of love triumphantly fulfilled.  Now she felt as if life had placed her in the corner of a huge silent room, blown out the flame of joy, and locked the door.  A little dry sob came from her.  The hay-fields and Cyril, with shirt unbuttoned at the neck, pitching hay and gazing at her while she dabbled her fork in the thin leavings.  The bright river, and their boat grounded on the shallows, and the swallows flitting over them.  And that long dance, with the feel of his hand between her shoulder-blades!  Memories so sweet and sharp that she almost cried out.  She saw again their dark grassy courtyard in the Abbey, and the white owl flying over them.  The white owl!  Flying there again to-night, with no lovers on the grass below!  She could only