with no respect for a girl’s honour, degrading the sex and being taken up to the police station.  No, no:  not that.  They would be just good friends like a big brother and sister without all that other in spite of the conventions of Society with a big ess.  Perhaps it was an old flame he was in mourning for from the days beyond recall.  She thought she understood.  She would try to understand him because men were so different.  The old love was waiting, waiting with little white hands stretched out, with blue appealing eyes.  Heart of mine!  She would follow, her dream of love, the dictates of her heart that told her he was her all in all, the only man in all the world for her for love was the master guide.  Nothing else mattered.  Come what might she would be wild, untrammelled, free.

Canon O’Hanlon put the Blessed Sacrament back into the tabernacle and genuflected and the choir sang LAUDATE DOMINUM OMNES Gentes and then he locked the tabernacle door because the benediction was over and Father Conroy handed him his hat to put on and crosscat Edy asked wasn’t she coming but Jacky Caffrey called out: 

—­O, look, Cissy!

And they all looked was it sheet lightning but Tommy saw it too over the trees beside the church, blue and then green and purple.

—­It’s fireworks, Cissy Caffrey said.

And they all ran down the strand to see over the houses and the church, helterskelter, Edy with the pushcar with baby Boardman in it and Cissy holding Tommy and Jacky by the hand so they wouldn’t fall running.

—­Come on, Gerty, Cissy called.  It’s the bazaar fireworks.

But Gerty was adamant.  She had no intention of being at their beck and call.  If they could run like rossies she could sit so she said she could see from where she was.  The eyes that were fastened upon her set her pulses tingling.  She looked at him a moment, meeting his glance, and a light broke in upon her.  Whitehot passion was in that face, passion silent as the grave, and it had made her his.  At last they were left alone without the others to pry and pass remarks and she knew he could be trusted to the death, steadfast, a sterling man, a man of inflexible honour to his fingertips.  His hands and face were working and a tremour went over her.  She leaned back far to look up where the fireworks were and she caught her knee in her hands so as not to fall back looking up and there was no-one to see only him and her when she revealed all her graceful beautifully shaped legs like that, supply soft and delicately rounded, and she seemed to hear the panting of his heart, his hoarse breathing, because she knew too about the passion of men like that, hotblooded, because Bertha Supple told her once in dead secret and made her swear she’d never about the gentleman lodger that was staying with them out of the Congested Districts Board that had pictures cut out of papers of those skirtdancers and highkickers and she said