picture Cyril now as a brown atom in that swirling brown flood of men, flowing to a huge brown sea.  Those cruel minutes on the platform, when she had searched and searched the walking wood for her, one tree, seemed to have burned themselves into her eyes.  Cyril was lost, she could not single him out, all blurred among those thousand other shapes.  And suddenly she thought:  ’And I—­I’m lost to him; he’s never seen me at home, never seen me in London; he won’t be able to imagine me.  It’s all in the past, only the past—­for both of us.  Is there anybody so unhappy?’ And the town’s voices-wheels, and passing feet, whistles, talk, laughter—­seemed to answer callously:  ‘Not one.’  She looked at her wrist-watch; like his, it had luminous hands:  ‘Half-past ten’ was greenishly imprinted there.  She got up in dismay.  They would think she was lost, or run over, or something silly!  She could not find an empty taxi, and began to walk, uncertain of her way at night.  At last she stopped a policeman, and said: 

“Which is the way towards Bloomsbury, please?  I can’t find a taxi.”  The man looked at her, and took time to think it over; then he said: 

“They’re linin’ up for the theatres,” and looked at her again.  Something seemed to move in his mechanism: 

“I’m goin’ that way, miss.  If you like, you can step along with me.”  Noel stepped along.

“The streets aren’t what they ought to be,” the policeman said.  “What with the darkness, and the war turning the girls heads—­you’d be surprised the number of them that comes out.  It’s the soldiers, of course.”

Noel felt her cheeks burning.

“I daresay you wouldn’t have noticed it,” the policeman went on:  “but this war’s a funny thing.  The streets are gayer and more crowded at night than I’ve ever seen them; it’s a fair picnic all the time.  What we’re goin’ to settle down to when peace comes, I don’t know.  I suppose you find it quiet enough up your way, miss?”

“Yes,” said Noel; “quite quiet.”

“No soldiers up in Bloomsbury.  You got anyone in the Army, miss?”

Noel nodded.

“Ah!  It’s anxious times for ladies.  What with the Zeps, and their brothers and all in France, it’s ‘arassin’.  I’ve lost a brother meself, and I’ve got a boy out there in the Garden of Eden; his mother carries on dreadful about him.  What we shall think of it when it’s all over, I can’t tell.  These Huns are a wicked tough lot!”

Noel looked at him; a tall man, regular and orderly, with one of those perfectly decent faces so often seen in the London police.

“I’m sorry you’ve lost someone,” she said.  “I haven’t lost anyone very near, yet.”