“Wouldn’t they stare if they knew what idiocy we’re up to!” she suggested.

Mr. Wrenn bobbed his head in entire agreement.  He was trying, without any slightest success, to make himself believe that Mr. William Wrenn, Our Mr. Wrenn, late of the Souvenir Company, was starting out for a country tramp at midnight with an artist girl.

The night foreman of the station, a person of bedizenment and pride, stared at them as they alighted at Chelmsford and glanced around like strangers.  Mr. Wrenn stared back defiantly and marched with Istra from the station, through the sleeping town, past its ragged edges, into the country.

They tramped on, a bit wearily.  Mr. Wrenn was beginning to wonder if they’d better go back to Chelmsford.  Mist was dripping and blind and silent about them, weaving its heavy gray with the night.  Suddenly Istra caught his arm at the gate to a farm-yard, and cried, “Look!”

“Gee!...  Gee! we’re in England.  We’re abroad!”

“Yes—­abroad.”

A paved courtyard with farm outbuildings thatched and ancient was lit faintly by a lantern hung from a post that was thumbed to a soft smoothness by centuries.

“That couldn’t be America,” he exulted.  “Gee!  I’m just gettin’ it!  I’m so darn glad we came....  Here’s real England.  No tourists.  It’s what I’ve always wanted—­a country that’s old.  And different....  Thatched houses!...  And pretty soon it’ll be dawn, summer dawn; with you, with Istra! Gee! It’s the darndest adventure.”

“Yes....  Come on.  Let’s walk fast or we’ll get sleepy, and then your romantic heroine will be a grouchy Interesting People!...  Listen!  There’s a sleepy dog barking, a million miles away....  I feel like telling you about myself.  You don’t know me.  Or do you?”

“I dunno just how you mean.”

“Oh, it shall have its romance!  But some time I’ll tell you—­perhaps I will—­how I’m not really a clever person at all, but just a savage from outer darkness, who pretends to understand London and Paris and Munich, and gets frightfully scared of them....  Wait!  Listen!  Hear the mist drip from that tree.  Are you nice and drowned?”

“Uh—­kind of.  But I been worrying about you being soaked.”

“Let me see.  Why, your sleeve is wet clear through.  This khaki of mine keeps out the water better....  But I don’t mind getting wet.  All I mind is being bored.  I’d like to run up this hill without a thing on—­just feeling the good healthy real mist on my skin.  But I’m afraid it isn’t done.”

Mile after mile.  Mostly she talked of the boulevards and Pere Dureon, of Debussy and artichokes, in little laughing sentences that sprang like fire out of the dimness of the mist.