He murmured.  “Oh!  It’s me!” blankly, and they seemed to become breathless together.  Apparently he was pondering over what he had heard; then, without irritation, but evidently perplexed, he said:  “I don’t understand.  I hadn’t written or anything.  It’s my chum who saw the paper and told me—­this very morning. . . .  Eh? what?”

He bent his ear; she whispered rapidly, and he listened for a while, muttering the words “yes” and “I see” at times.  Then, “But why won’t today do?” he queried at last.

“You didn’t understand me!” she exclaimed, impatiently.  The clear streak of light under the clouds died out in the west.  Again he stooped slightly to hear better; and the deep night buried everything of the whispering woman and the attentive man, except the familiar contiguity of their faces, with its air of secrecy and caress.

He squared his shoulders; the broad-brimmed shadow of a hat sat cavalierly on his head.  “Awkward this, eh?” he appealed to her.  “To-morrow?  Well, well!  Never heard tell of anything like this.  It’s all to-morrow, then, without any sort of to-day, as far as I can see.”

She remained still and mute.

“And you have been encouraging this funny notion,” he said.

“I never contradicted him.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“What for should I?” she defended herself.  “It would only have made him miserable.  He would have gone out of his mind.”

“His mind!” he muttered, and heard a short nervous laugh from her.

“Where was the harm?  Was I to quarrel with the poor old man?  It was easier to half believe it myself.”

“Aye, aye,” he meditated, intelligently.  “I suppose the old chap got around you somehow with his soft talk.  You are good-hearted.”

Her hands moved up in the dark nervously.  “And it might have been true.  It was true.  It has come.  Here it is.  This is the to-morrow we have been waiting for.”

She drew a breath, and he said, good-humouredly:  “Aye, with the door shut.  I wouldn’t care if . . .  And you think he could be brought round to recognise me . . .  Eh?  What? . . .  You could do it?  In a week you say?  H’m, I daresay you could—­but do you think I could hold out a week in this dead-alive place?  Not me!  I want either hard work, or an all-fired racket, or more space than there is in the whole of England.  I have been in this place, though, once before, and for more than a week.  The old man was advertising for me then, and a chum I had with me had a notion of getting a couple quid out of him by writing a lot of silly nonsense in a letter.  That lark did not come off, though.  We had to clear out—­and none too soon.  But this time I’ve a chum waiting for me in London, and besides . . .”

Bessie Carvil was breathing quickly.

“What if I tried a knock at the door?” he suggested.

“Try,” she said.

Captain Hagberd’s gate squeaked, and the shadow of the son moved on, then stopped with another deep laugh in the throat, like the father’s, only soft and gentle, thrilling to the woman’s heart, awakening to her ears.