into couples was distinctly precious to them, for, though they never failed to start out together, they never failed to come home two by two.  In this way did they put to confusion Whitman and Dostoievsky, and all the other thinkers in Hampstead.  In the daytime they all, save Alan, felt that London ought to be blown up; but at night it undermined their philosophies so that they sat silent on the tops of their respective ’buses, with arms twined in each other’s.  For then a something seemed to have floated up from that mass of houses and machines, of men and trees, and to be hovering above them, violet-colored, caught between the stars and the lights, a spirit of such overpowering beauty that it drenched even Alan in a kind of awe.  After all, the huge creature that sat with such a giant’s weight on the country’s chest, the monster that had spoiled so many fields and robbed so many lives of peace and health, could fly at night upon blue and gold and purple wings, murmur a passionate lullaby, and fall into deep sleep!

One such night they went to the gallery at the opera, to supper at an oyster-shop, under Alan’s pilotage, and then set out to walk back to Hampstead, timing themselves to catch the dawn.  They had not gone twenty steps up Southampton Row before Alan and Sheila were forty steps in front.  A fellow-feeling had made Derek and Nedda stand to watch an old man who walked, tortuous, extremely happy, bidding them all come.  And when they moved on, it was very slowly, just keeping sight of the others across the lumbered dimness of Covent Garden, where tarpaulin-covered carts and barrows seemed to slumber under the blink of lamps and watchmen’s lanterns.  Across Long Acre they came into a street where there was not a soul save the two others, a long way ahead.  Walking with his arm tightly laced with hers, touching her all down one side, Derek felt that it would be glorious to be attacked by night-birds in this dark, lonely street, to have a splendid fight and drive them off, showing himself to Nedda for a man, and her protector.  But nothing save one black cat came near, and that ran for its life.  He bent round and looked under the blue veil-thing that wrapped Nedda’s head.  Her face seemed mysteriously lovely, and her eyes, lifted so quickly, mysteriously true.  She said: 

“Derek, I feel like a hill with the sun on it!”

“I feel like that yellow cloud with the wind in it.”

“I feel like an apple-tree coming into blossom.”

“I feel like a giant.”

“I feel like a song.”

“I feel I could sing you.”

“On a river, floating along.”

“A wide one, with great plains on each side, and beasts coming down to drink, and either the sun or a yellow moon shining, and some one singing, too, far off.”

“The Red Sarafan.”

“Let’s run!”

From that yellow cloud sailing in moonlight a spurt of rain had driven into their faces, and they ran as fast as their blood was flowing, and the raindrops coming down, jumping half the width of the little dark streets, clutching each other’s arms.  And peering round into her face, so sweet and breathless, into her eyes, so dark and dancing, he felt he could run all night if he had her there to run beside him through the dark.  Into another street they dashed, and again another, till she stopped, panting.