i

After leaving the house Emmy and Alf pressed along in the darkness, Alf’s arm still surrounding and supporting Emmy, Emmy still half jubilantly and half sorrowfully continuing to recognise her happiness and the smothered chagrin of her emotions. She was not able to feel either happy or miserable; but happiness was uppermost. Dislike of Jenny had its place, also; for she could account for every weakness of Alf’s by reference to Jenny’s baseness. But indeed Emmy could not think, and could only passively and excitedly endure the conflicting emotions of the moment. And Alf did not speak, but hurried her along as fast as his strong arm could secure her compliance with his own pace; and they walked through the night-ridden streets and full into the blaze of the theatre entrance without any words at all. Then, when the staring vehemence of the electric lights whitened and shadowed her face, Emmy drew away, casting down her eyes, alarmed at the disclosures which the brilliance might devastatingly make. She slipped from his arm, and stood rather forlornly while Alf fished in his pockets for the tickets. With docility she followed him, thrilled when he stepped aside in passing the commissionaire and took her arm. Together they went up the stairs, the heavy carpets with their drugget covers silencing every step, the gilded mirrors throwing their reflections backwards and forwards until the stairs seemed peopled with hosts of Emmys and Alfs. As they drew near the closed doors of the circle the hush filling the staircases and vestibules of the theatre was intensified. An aproned attendant seemed to Emmy’s sensitiveness to look them up and down and superciliously to disapprove them. She moved with indignation. A dull murmur, as of single voices, disturbed the air somewhere behind the rustling attendant: and when the doors were quickly opened Emmy saw beyond the darkness and the intrusive flash of light caused by the opening doors a square of brilliance and a dashing figure upon the stage talking staccato. Those of the audience who were sitting near the doors turned angrily and with curiosity to view the new-comers; and the voice that Emmy had distinguished went more stridently on, with a strong American accent. In a flurry she found and crept into her seat, trying to understand the play, to touch Alf, to remove her hat, to discipline her excitements. And the staccato voice went on and on, detailing a plan of some sort which she could not understand because they had missed the first five minutes of the play. Emmy could not tell that the actor was only pretending to be an American; she could not understand why, having spoken twenty words, he must take six paces farther from the footlights until he had spoken thirteen more; but she could and did feel most overwhelmingly exuberant at being as it were alone in that half-silent multitude, sitting beside Alf, their arms touching, her head whirling, her heart beating, and a wholly exquisite warmth flushing her cheeks.

ii

The first interval found the play well advanced. A robbery had been planned for it was a “crook” play and the heroine had already received wild-eyed the advances of a fur-coated millionaire. When the lights of the theatre popped up, and members of the orchestra began once more unmercifully to tune their instruments, it was possible to look round at the not especially large audience. But in whichever direction Emmy looked she was always brought back as by a magnet to Alf, who sat ruminantly beside her. To Alf’s sidelong eye Emmy was looking surprisingly lovely. The tired air and the slightly peevish mouth to which he was accustomed had given place to the flush and sparkle of an excited girl. Alf was aware of surprise. He blinked. He saw the lines smoothed away from round her mouth the lines of weariness and dissatisfaction, and was tempted by the softness of her cheek. As he looked quickly off again he thought how full Jenny would have been of comment upon the play, how he would have sat grinning with precious enjoyment at her merciless gibes during the whole of the interval. He had the sense of Jenny as all movement, as flashing and drawing him into quagmires of sensation, like a will-o’-the-wisp. Emmy was not like that. She sat tremulously smiling, humble before him, diffident, flattering. She was intelligent: that was it. Intelligent was the word. Not lively, but restful. Critically he regarded her. Rather a nice girl, Emmy....

Alf roused himself, and looked around.

“Here, miss!” he called; and “S-s-s-s” when she did not hear him. It was his way of summoning an attendant or a waitress. “S-s-s-s.” The attendant brought chocolates, which Alf handed rather magnificently to his companion. He plunged into his pockets in his rough-and-ready, muscular way for the money, leaning far over the next seat, which was unoccupied. “Like some lemon?” he said to Emmy. Together they inspected the box of chocolates, which contained much imitation-lace paper and a few sweets. “Not half a sell,” grumbled Alf to himself, thinking of the shilling he had paid; but he looked with gratification at Emmy’s face as she enjoyingly ate the chocolates. As her excitement a little strained her nervous endurance Emmy began to pale under the eyes; her eyes seemed to grow larger; she lost the first air of sparkle, but she became more pathetic. “Poor little thing,” thought Alf, feeling masculine. “Poor little thing: she’s tired. Poor little thing.”

iii

In the middle of this hot, excitedly-talking audience, they seemed to bask as in a warm pool of brilliant light. The brilliants in the dome of the theatre intensified all the shadows, heightened all the smiles, illumined all the silken blouses and silver bangles, the flashing eyes, the general air of fête.

“All right?” Alf inquired protectively. Emmy looked in gratitude towards him.

“Lovely,” she said. “Have another?”

“I meant you,” he persisted. “Yourself, I mean.” Emmy smiled, so happily that nobody could have been unmoved at the knowledge of having given such pleasure.

“Oh, grand!” Emmy said. Then her eyes contracted. Memory came to her. The angry scene that had passed earlier returned to her mind, hurting her, and injuring her happiness. Alf hurried to engage her attention, to distract her from thoughts that had in them such discomfort as she so quickly showed.

“Like the play? I didn’t quite follow what it was this old general had done to him. Did you?”

“Hadn’t he kept him from marrying ...” Emmy looked conscious for a moment. “Marrying the right girl? I didn’t understand it either. It’s only a play.”

“Of course,” Alf agreed. “See how that girl’s eyes shone when old fur-coat went after her? Fair shone, they did. Like lamps. They’d got the limes on her... You couldn’t see them. My er my friend’s the electrician here. He says it drives him nearly crazy, the way he has to follow her about in the third act. She... she’s got some pluck, he says; the way she fights three of them single-handed. They’ve all got revolvers. She’s got one; but it’s not loaded. Lights a cigarette, too, with them all watching her, ready to rush at her.”

“There!” said Emmy, admiringly. She was thinking: “It’s only a play.”

“She gets hold of his fur coat, and puts it on.... Imitates his voice.... You can see it’s her all the time, you know. So could they, if they looked a bit nearer. However, they don’t.... I suppose there wouldn’t be any play if they did....”

Emmy was not listening to him: she was dreaming. She was as gauche and simple in his company as a young girl would have been; but her mind was different. It was practical in its dreams, and they had their disturbing unhappiness, as well, from the greater poignancy of her desire. She was not a young girl, to be agreeably fluttered and to pass on to the next admirer without a qualm. She loved him, blindly but painfully; without the ease of young love, but with all the sickness of first love. And she had jealousy, the feeling that she was not his first object, to poison her feelings. She could not think of Jenny without tremors of anger. And still, for pain, her thoughts went throbbing on about Jenny whenever, in happiness, she had seen a home and Alf and a baby and the other plain clear consequences of earning his love of taking him from Jenny.

And then the curtain rose, the darkness fell, and the orchestra’s tune slithered into nothing. The play went on, about the crook and the general and the millionaire and the heroine and all their curiously simple-minded friends. And every moment something happened upon the stage, from fights to thefts, from kisses (which those in the gallery, not wholly absorbed by the play, generously augmented) to telephone calls, plots, speeches (many speeches, of irreproachable moral tone), shoutings, and sudden wild appeals to the delighted occupants of the gallery. And Emmy sat through it hardly heeding the uncommon events, aware of them as she would have been aware of distant shouting. Her attention was preoccupied with other matters. She had her own thoughts, serious enough in themselves. Above all, she was enjoying the thought that she was with Alf, and that their arms were touching; and she was wondering if he knew that.

iv

Through another interval they sat with silent embarrassment, the irreplaceable chocolates, which had earlier been consumed, having served their turn as a means of devouring attention. Alf was tempted to fly to the bar for a drink and composure, but he did not like to leave Emmy; and he could not think of anything which could safely be said to her in the middle of this gathering of hot and radiant persons. “To speak” in such uproar meant “to shout.” He felt that every word he uttered would go echoing in rolls and rolls of sound out among the multitude. They were not familiar enough to make that a matter of indifference to him. He was in the stage of secretiveness. And Emmy, after trying once or twice to open various small topics, had fallen back upon her own thoughts, and could invent nothing to talk about until the difficulties that lay between them had been removed. Her brow contracted. She moved her shoulders, or sat pressed reservedly against the back of her seat. Her voice, whenever she did not immediately hear some word fall from Alf, became sharp and self-conscious almost “managing.”

It was a relief to both of them, and in both the tension of sincere feeling had perceptibly slackened, when the ignored orchestra gave way before the rising curtain. Again the two drew together in the darkness, as all other couples were doing, comforted by proximity, and even by the unacknowledged mutual pleasure of it; again they watched the extraordinary happenings upon the stage. The fur coat was much used, cigarettes were lighted and flung away with prodigal recklessness, pistols were revealed one of them was even fired into the air; and jumping, trickling music heightened the effects of a number of strong speeches about love, and incorruptibility, and womanhood.... The climax was reached. In the middle of the climax, while yet the lover wooed and the villain died, the audience began to rustle, preparatory to going home. Even Emmy was influenced to the extent of discovering and beginning to adjust her hat. It was while she was pinning it, with her elbows raised, that the curtain fell. Both Emmy and Alf rose in the immediately successive re-illumination of the theatre; and Emmy looked so pretty with her arms up, and with the new hat so coquettishly askew upon her head, and with a long hatpin between her teeth, that Alf could not resist the impulse to put his arm affectionately round her in leading the way out.

v

And then, once in the street, he made no scruple about taking Emmy’s arm within the crook of his as they moved from the staring whiteness of the theatre lamps out into the calmer moonshine. It was eleven o’clock. The night was fine, and the moon rode high above amid the twinkling stars. When Alf looked at Emmy’s face it was transfigured in this beautiful light, and he drew her gently from the direct way back to the little house.

“Don’t let’s go straight back,” he said. “Stroll u’ll do us good.”

Very readily Emmy obeyed his guidance. Her heart was throbbing; but her brain was clear. He wanted to be with her; and the knowledge of that made Emmy happier than she had been since early childhood.

“It’s been lovely,” she said, with real warmth of gratitude, looking away from him with shyness.

“Hm,” growled Alf, in a voice of some confusion. “Er...you don’t go much to the theatre, do you?”

“Not much,” Emmy agreed. “See, there’s Pa. He always looks to me...”

“Yes.” Alf could not add anything to that for a long time. “Fine night,” he presently recorded. “D’you like a walk? I mean ... I’m very fond of it, a night like this. Mr. Blanchard’s all right, I suppose?”

“Oh, yes. She’s there.” Emmy could not bring herself to name Jenny to him. Yet her mind was busy thinking of the earlier jar, recomposing the details, recalling the words that had passed. Memory brought tears into her eyes; but she would not allow Alf to see them, and soon she recovered her self-control. It had to be spoken of: the evening could not pass without reference to it; or it would spoil everything. Alf would think of her he was bound to think of her as a crying, petulant, jealous woman, to whom he had been merely kind. Patronising, even! Perhaps, even, the remembrance of it would prevent him from coming again to the house. Men like Alf were so funny in that respect. It took so little to displease them, to drive them away altogether. At last she ventured: “It was nice of you to take me.”

Alf fidgeted, jerking his head, and looking recklessly about him.

“Not at all,” he grumbled. “Not tired, are you?” Emmy reassured him. “What I mean, I’m very glad.... Now, look here, Em. May as well have it out....” Emmy’s heart gave a bound: she walked mechanically beside him, her head as stiffly held as though the muscles of her neck had been paralysed. “May as well, er...have it out,” repeated Alf. “That’s how I am I like to be all shipshape from the start. When I came along this evening I did mean to ask young Jen to go with me. That was quite as you thought. I never thought you’d, you know, care to come with me. I don’t know why; but there it is. I never meant to put it like I did ... in that way... to have a fuss and upset anybody. I’ve ... I mean, she’s been out with me half-a-dozen times; and so I sort of naturally thought of her.”

“Of course,” agreed Emmy. “Of course.”

“But I ’m glad you came,” Alf said. Something in his honesty, and the brusqueness of his rejoicing, touched Emmy, and healed her first wound the thought that she might have been unwelcome to him. They went on a little way, more at ease; both ready for the next step in intimacy which was bound to be taken by one of them.

“I thought she might have said something to you about me not wanting to come,” Emmy proceeded, tentatively. “Made you think I never wanted to go out.”

Alf shook his head. Emmy had there no opening for her resentment.

“No,” he said, with stubborn loyalty. “She’s always talked very nice about you.”

“What does she say?” swiftly demanded Emmy.

“I forget.... Saying you had a rough time at home. Saying it was rough on you. That you’re one of the best....”

"She said that?” gasped Emmy. “It’s not like her to say that. Did she really? She’s so touchy about me, generally. Sometimes, the way she goes on, anybody’d think I was the miserablest creature in the world, and always on at her about something. I’m not, you know; only she thinks it. Well, I can’t help it, can I? If you knew how I have to work in that house, you’d be... surprised. I’m always at it. The way the dirt comes in you’d wonder where it all came from! And see, there’s Pa and all. She doesn’t take that into account. She gets on all right with him; but she isn’t there all day, like I am. That makes a difference, you know. He’s used to me. She’s more of a change for him.”

Alf was cordial in agreement. He was seeing all the difference between the sisters. In his heart there still lingered a sort of cherished enjoyment of Jenny’s greater spirit. Secretly it delighted him, like a forbidden joke. He felt that Jenny for all that he must not, at this moment, mention her name kept him on the alert all the time, so that he was ever in hazardous pursuit. There was something fascinating in such excitement as she caused him. He never knew what she would do or say next; and while that disturbed and distressed him it also lacerated his vanity and provoked his admiration. He admired Jenny more than he could ever admire Emmy. But he also saw Emmy as different from his old idea of her. He had seen her trembling defiance early in the evening, and that had moved him and made him a little afraid of her; he had also seen her flushed cheeks at the theatre, and Emmy had grown in his eyes suddenly younger. He could not have imagined her so cordial, so youthful, so interested in everything that met her gaze. Finally, he found her quieter, more amenable, more truly wifely than her sister. It was an important point in Alf’s eyes. You had to take into account if you were a man of common sense relative circumstances. Devil was all very well in courtship; but mischief in a girl became contrariness in a domestic termagant. That was an idea that was very much in Alf’s thoughts during this walk, and it lingered there like acquired wisdom.

“Say she’s going with a sailor!” he suddenly demanded.

“So she told me. I’ve never seen him. She doesn’t tell lies, though.”

“I thought you said she did!”

Emmy flinched: she had forgotten the words spoken in her wild anger, and would have been ashamed to account for them in a moment of greater coolness.

“I mean, if she says he’s a sailor, that’s true. She told me he was on a ship. I suppose she met him when she was away that time. She’s been very funny ever since. Not funny restless. Anything I’ve done for her she’s made a fuss. I give her a thorough good meal; and oh! there’s such a fuss about it. ’Why don’t we have ice creams, and merangs, and wine, and grouse, and sturgeon ’”

“Ph! Silly talk!” said Alf, in contemptuous wonder. “I mean to say...”

“Oh, well: you know what flighty girls are. He’s probably a swank-pot. A steward, or something of that sort. I expect he has what’s left over, and talks big about it. But she’s got ideas like that in her head, and she thinks she’s too good for the likes of us. It’s too much trouble to her to be pelite these days. I’ve got the fair sick of it, I can tell you. And then she’s always out..._Somebody’s_ got to be at home, just to look after Pa and keep the fire in. But Jenny oh dear no! She’s no sooner home than she’s out again. Can’t rest. Says it’s stuffy indoors, and off she goes. I don’t see her for hours. Well, I don’t know ... but if she doesn’t quiet down a bit she’ll only be making trouble for herself later on. She can’t keep house, you know! She can scrub; but she can’t cook so very well, or keep the place nice. She hasn’t got the patience. You think she’s doing the dusting; and you find her groaning about what she’d do if she was rich. ‘Yes,’ I tell her; ’it’s all very well to do that; but you’d far better be doing something useful,’ I say. ‘Instead of wasting your time on idle fancies.’”

“Very sensible,” agreed Alf, completely absorbed in such a discourse.

“She’s trying, you know. You can’t leave her for a minute. She says I’m stodgy; but I say it’s better to be practical than flighty. Don’t you think so, Alf?”

“Exackly!” said Alf, in a tone of the gravest assent. “Exackly.”

vi

“I mean,” pursued Emmy, “you must have a little common-sense. But she’s been spoilt she’s the youngest. I’m a little older than she is ... wiser, I say; but she won’t have it.... And Pa’s always made a fuss of her. Really, sometimes, you’d have thought she was a boy. Racing about! My word, such a commotion! And then going out to the millinery, and getting among a lot of other girls. You don’t know who they are if they’re ladies or not. It’s not a good influence for her....”

“She ought to get out of it,” Alf said. To Emmy it was a ghastly moment.

“She’ll never give it up,” she hurriedly said. “You know, it’s in her blood. Off she goes! And they make a fuss of her. She mimics everybody, and they laugh at it they think it’s funny to mimic people who can’t help themselves if they are a bit comic. So she goes; and when she does come home Pa’s so glad to see a fresh face that he makes a fuss of her, too. And she stuffs him up with all sorts of tales things that never happened to keep him quiet. She says it gives him something to think about.... Well, I suppose it does. I expect you think I’m very unkind to say such things about my own sister; but really I can’t help seeing what’s under my nose; and I sometimes get so you know, worked up, that I don’t know how to hold myself. She doesn’t understand what it is to be cooped up indoors all day long, like I am; and it never occurs to her to say ‘Go along, Em; you run out for a bit.’ I have to say to her: ‘You be in for a bit, Jen?’ and then she p’tends she’s always in. And then there’s a rumpus....”

Alf was altogether subdued by this account: it had that degree of intimacy which, when one is in a sentimental mood, will always be absorbing. He felt that he really was getting to the bottom of the mystery known to him as Jenny Blanchard. The picture had verisimilitude. He could see Jenny as he listened. He was seeing her with the close and searching eye of a sister, as nearly true, he thought, as any vision could be. Once the thought, “I expect there’s another story” came sidling into his head; but it was quickly drowned in further reminiscence from Emmy, so that it was clearly a dying desire that he left for Jenny. Had Jenny been there, to fling her gage into the field, Alf might gapingly have followed her, lost again in admiration of her more sparkling tongue and equipments. But in such circumstances the arraigned party is never present. If Jenny had been there the tale could not have been told. Emmy’s virtuous and destructive monologue would not merely have been interrupted: it would have been impossible. Jenny would have done all the talking. The others, all amaze, would have listened with feelings appropriate to each, though with feelings in common unpleasant to be borne.

“I bet there’s a rumpus,” Alf agreed. “Old Jen’s not one to take a blow. She ups and gets in the first one.” He couldn’t help admiring Jenny, even yet. So he hastened to pretend that he did not admire her; out of a kind of tact. “But of course ... that’s all very well for a bit of sport, but it gets a bit wearisome after a time. I know what you mean....”

“Don’t think I’ve been complaining about her,” Emmy said. “I wouldn’t. Really, I wouldn’t. Only I do think sometimes it’s not quite fair that she should have all the fun, and me none of it. I don’t want a lot. My tastes are very simple. But when it comes to none at all well, Alf, what do you think?”

“It’s a bit thick,” admitted Alf. “And that’s a fact.”

“See, she’s always having her own way. Does just what she likes. There’s no holding her.”

“Wants a man to do that,” ruminated Alf, with a half chuckle. “Eh?”

“Well,” said Emmy, a little brusquely. “I pity the man who tries it on.”

vii

Emmy was not deliberately trying to secure from Alf a proposal of marriage. She was trying to show him the contrast between Jenny and herself, and to readjust the balances as he appeared to have been holding them. She wanted to impress him. She was as innocent of any other intention as any girl could have been. It was jealousy that spoke; not scheme. And she was perfectly sincere in her depreciation of Jenny. She could not understand what it was that made the admiring look come into the faces of those who spoke to Jenny, nor why the unwilling admiration that started into her own heart should ever find a place there. She was baffled by character, and she was engaged in the common task of rearranging life to suit her own temperament.

They had been walking for some little distance now along deserted streets, the moon shining upon them, their steps softly echoing, and Emmy’s arm as warm as toast. It was like a real lover’s walk, she could not help thinking, half in the shadow and wholly in the stillness of the quiet streets. She felt very contented; and with her long account of Jenny already uttered, and her tough body already reanimated by the walk, Emmy was at leisure to let her mind wander among sweeter things. There was love, for example, to think about; and when she glanced sideways Alf’s shoulder seemed such a little distance from her cheek. And his hand was lightly clasping her wrist. A strong hand, was Alf’s, with a broad thumb and big capable fingers. She could see it in the moonlight, and she had suddenly an extraordinary longing to press her cheek against the back of Alf’s hand. She did not want any silly nonsense, she told herself; and the tears came into her eyes, and her nose seemed pinched and tickling with the cold at the mere idea of any nonsense; but she could not help longing with the most intense longing to press her cheek against the back of Alf’s hand. That was all. She wanted nothing more. But that desire thrilled her. She felt that if it might be granted she would be content, altogether happy. She wanted so little!

And as if Alf too had been thinking of somebody nearer to him than Jenny, he began:

“I don’t know if you’ve ever thought at all about me, Em. But your saying what you’ve done ... about yourself ... it’s made me think a bit. I’m all on my own now have been for years; but the way I live isn’t good for anyone. It’s a fact it’s not. I mean to say, my rooms that I’ve got ... they’re not big enough to swing a cat in; and the way the old girl at my place serves up the meals is a fair knock-out, if you notice things like I do. If I think of her, and then about the way you do things, it gives me the hump. Everything you do’s so nice. But with her the plates have still got bits of yesterday’s mustard on them, and all fluffy from the dishcloth....”

“Not washed prop’ly.” Emmy interestedly remarked; “that’s what that is.”

“Exackly. And the meat’s raw inside. Cooks it too quickly. And when I have a bloater for my breakfast I’m partial to a bloater it’s black outside, as if it was done in the cinders; and then inside well, I like them done all through, like any other man. Then I can’t get her to get me gammon rashers. She will get these little tiddy rashers, with little white bones in them. Why, while you’re cutting them out the bacon gets cold. You may think I’m fussy ... fiddly with my food. I’m not, really; only I like it....”

“Of course you do,” Emmy said. “She’s not interested, that’s what it is. She thinks anything’s food; and some people don’t mind at all what they eat. They don’t notice.”

“No. I do. If you go to a restaurant you get it different. You get more of it, too. Well, what with one thing and another I’ve got very fed up with Madame Bucks. It’s all dirty and half baked. There’s great holes in the carpet of my sitting-room holes you could put your foot through. And I’ve done that, as a matter of fact. Put my foot through and nearly gone over. Should have done, only for the table. Well, I mean to say ... you can’t help being fed up with it. But she knows where I work, and I know she’s hard up; so I don’t like to go anywhere else, because if anybody asked me if he should go there, I couldn’t honestly recommend him to; and yet, you see how it is, I shouldn’t like to leave her in the lurch, if she knew I was just gone somewhere else down the street.”

“No,” sympathetically agreed Emmy. “I quite see. It’s very awkward for you. Though it’s no use being too kind-hearted with these people; because they don’t appreciate it; and if you don’t say anything they just go on in the same way, never troubling themselves about you. They think, as long as you don’t say anything you’re all right; and it’s not their place to make any alteration. They’re quite satisfied. Look at Jenny and me.”

“Is she satisfied!” asked Alf.

“With herself, she is. She’s never satisfied with me. She never tries to see it from my point of view.”

“No,” Alf nodded his head wisely. “That’s what it is. They don’t.” He nodded again.

“Isn’t it a lovely night,” ventured Emmy. “See the moon over there.”

They looked up at the moon and the stars and the unfathomable sky. It took them at once away from the streets and the subject of their talk. Both sighed as they stared upwards, lost in the beauty before them. And when at last their eyes dropped, the street lamps had become so yellow and tawdry that they were like stupid spangles in contrast with the stars. Alf still held Emmy’s arm so snugly within his own, and her wrist was within the clasp of his fingers. It was so little a thing to slide his fingers into a firm clasp of her hand, and they drew closer.

“Lovely, eh!” Alf ejaculated, with a further upward lift of his eyes. Emmy sighed again.

“Not like down here,” she soberly said.

“No, it’s different. Down here’s all right, though,” Alf assured her. “Don’t you think it is?” He gave a rather nervous little half laugh. “Don’t you think it is?”

“Grand!” Emmy agreed, with the slightest hint of dryness.

“I say, it was awfully good of you to come to-night,” said Alf. “I’ve ... you’ve enjoyed it, haven’t you?” He was looking sharply at her, and Emmy’s face was illumined. He saw her soft cheeks, her thin, soft little neck; he felt her warm gloved hand within his own. “D’you mind?” he asked, and bent abruptly so that their faces were close together. For a moment, feeling so daring that his breath caught, Alf could not carry out his threat. Then, roughly, he pushed his face against hers, kissing her. Quickly he released Emmy’s arm, so that his own might be more protectingly employed; and they stood embraced in the moonlight.

viii

It was only for a minute, for Emmy, with instinctive secrecy, drew away into the shadow. At first Alf did not understand, and thought himself repelled; but Emmy’s hands were invitingly raised. The first delight was broken. One more sensitive might have found it hard to recapture; but Alf stepped quickly to her side in the shadow, and they kissed again. He was surprised at her passion. He had not expected it, and the flattery was welcome. He grinned a little in the safe darkness, consciously and even sheepishly, but with eagerness. They were both clumsy and a little trembling, not very practised lovers, but curious and excited. Emmy felt her hat knocked a little sideways upon her head.

It was Emmy who moved first, drawing herself away from him, she knew not why.

“Where you going?” asked Alf, detaining her. “What is it? Too rough, am I?” He could not see Emmy’s shaken head, and was for a moment puzzled at the ways of woman so far from his grasp.

“No,” Emmy said. “It’s wonderful.”

Peering closely, Alf could see her eyes shining.

“D’you think you’re fond enough of me, Emmy?” She demurred.

“That’s a nice thing to say! As if it was for me to tell you!” she whispered archly back.

“What ought I to say? I’m not ... mean to say, I don’t know how to say things, Emmy. You’ll have to put up with my rough ways. Give us a kiss, old sport.”

“How many more! You are a one!” Emmy was not pliant enough. In her voice there was the faintest touch of something that was not self-consciousness, that was perhaps a sense of failure. Perhaps she was back again suddenly into her maturity, finding it somehow ridiculous to be kissed and to kiss with such abandon. Alf was not baffled, however. As she withdrew he advanced, so that his knuckle rubbed against the brick wall to which Emmy had retreated.

“I say,” he cried sharply. “Here’s the wall.”

“Hurt yourself?” Emmy quickly caught his hand and raised it, examining the knuckle. The skin might have been roughened; but no blood was drawn. Painfully, exultingly, her dream realised, she pressed her cheek against the back of his hand.

ix

“What’s that for?” demanded Alf.

“Nothing. Never you mind. I wanted to do it.” Emmy’s cheeks were hot as she spoke; but Alf marvelled at the action, and at her confession of such an impulse.

“How long had you ... wanted to do it?”

“Mind your own business. The idea! Don’t you know better than that?” Emmy asked. It made him chuckle delightedly to have such a retort from her. And it stimulated his curiosity.

“I believe you’re a bit fond of me,” he said. “I don’t see why. There’s nothing about me to write home about, I shouldn’t think. But there it is: love’s a wonderful thing.”

“Is it?” asked Emma, distantly. Why couldn’t he say he loved her? Too proud, was he? Or was he shy? He had only used the word “love” once, and that was in this general sense as though there was such a thing. Emmy was shy of the word, too; but not as shy as that. She was for a moment anxious, because she wanted him to say the word, or some equivalent. If it was not said, she was dependent upon his charity later, and would cry sleeplessly at night for want of sureness of him.

“D’you love me?” she suddenly said. Alf whistled. He seemed for that instant to be quite taken aback by her inquiry. “There’s no harm in me asking, I suppose.” Into Emmy’s voice there came a thread of roughness.

“No harm at all,” Alf politely said. “Not at all.” He continued to hesitate.

“Well?” Emmy waited, still in his arms, her ears alert.

“We’re engaged, aren’t we?” Alf muttered shamefacedly. “Erum ... what sort of ring would you like? I don’t say you’ll get it ... and it’s too late to go and choose one to-night.”

Emmy flushed again: he felt her tremble.

“You are in a hurry,” she said, too much moved for her archness to take effect.

“Yes, I am.” Alf’s quick answer was reassuring enough. Emmy’s heart was eased. She drew him nearer with her arms about his neck, and they kissed again.

“I wish you’d say you love me,” she whispered. “Mean such a lot to me.”

“No!” cried Alf incredulously. “Really?”

“Do you?”

“I’ll think about it. Do you me?”

“Yes. I don’t mind saying it if you will.”

Alf gave a little whistle to himself, half under his breath. He looked carefully to right and left, and up at the house-wall against which they were standing. Nobody seemed to be in danger of making him feel an abject fool by overhearing such a confession as he was invited to make; and yet it was such a terrible matter. He was confronted with a difficulty of difficulties. He looked at Emmy, and knew that she was waiting, entreating him with her shining eyes.

“Er,” said Alf, reluctantly and with misgiving. “Er ... well, I ... a ... suppose I do....”

Emmy gave a little cry, that was half a smothered laugh of happiness at her triumph. It was not bad! She had made him admit it on the first evening. Later, when she was more at ease, he should be more explicit.

x

“Well,” said Alf, instantly regretting his admission, and inclined to bluster. “Now I suppose you’re satisfied?”

“Awfully!” breathed Emmy. “You’re a dear good soul. You’re splendid, Alf!”

For a few minutes more they remained in that benign, unforgettable shadow; and then, very slowly, with Alf’s arm about Emmy’s waist, and Emmy’s shoulder so confidingly against his breast, they began to return homewards. Both spoke very subduedly, and tried to keep their shoes from too loudly striking the pavement as they walked; and the wandering wind came upon them in glee round every corner and rustled like a busybody among all the consumptive bushes in the front gardens they passed. Sounds carried far. A long way away they heard the tramcars grinding along the main road. But here all was hush, and the beating of two hearts in unison; and to both of them happiness lay ahead. Their aims were similar, in no point jarring or divergent. Both wanted a home, and loving labour, and quiet evenings of pleasant occupation. To both the daily work came with regularity, not as an intrusion or a wrong to manhood and womanhood; it was inevitable, and was regarded as inevitable. Neither Emmy nor Alf ever wondered why they should be working hard when the sun shone and the day was fine. Neither compared the lot accorded by station with an ideal fortune of blessed ease. They were not temperamentally restless. They both thought, with a practical sense that is as convenient as it is generally accepted, “somebody must do the work: may as well be me.” No discontent would be theirs. And Alf was a good worker at the bench, a sober and honest man; and Emmy could make a pound go as far as any other woman in Kennington Park. They had before them a faithful future of work in common, of ideals (workaday ideals) in common; and at this instant they were both marvellously content with the immediate outlook. Not for them to change the order of the world.

“I feel it’s so suitable,” Emmy startlingly said, in a hushed tone, as they walked. “Your ... you know ... ‘supposing you do’ ... me; and me ... doing the same for you.”

Alf looked solemnly round at her. His Emmy skittish? It was not what he had thought. Still, it diverted him; and he ambled in pursuit.

“Yes,” he darkly said. “What do you ‘suppose you do’ for me?”

“Why, love you,” Emmy hurried to explain, trapping herself by speed into the use of the tabooed word. “Didn’t you know? Though it seems funny to say it like that. It’s so new. I’ve never dared to ... you know ... say it. I mean, we’re both of us quiet, and reliable ... we’re not either of us flighty, I mean. That’s why I think we suit each other better than if we’d been different. Not like we are.”

“I’m sure we do,” Alf said.

“Not like some people. You can’t help wondering to yourself however they came to get married. They seem so unlike. Don’t they! It’s funny. Ah well, love’s a wonderful thing as you say!” She turned archly to him, encouragingly.

“You seem happy,” remarked Alf, in a critical tone. But he was not offended; only tingled into desire for her by the strange gleam of merriment crossing her natural seriousness, the jubilant note of happy consciousness that the evening’s lovemaking had bred. Alf drew her more closely to his side, increasingly sure that he had done well. She was beginning to intrigue him. With an emotion that startled himself as much as it delighted Emmy, he said thickly in her ear, “D’you love me ... like this?”

xi

They neared the road in which the Blanchards lived: Emmy began to press forward as Alf seemed inclined to loiter. In the neighbourhood the church that had struck eight as they left the house began once again to record an hour.

“By George!” cried Alf. “Twelve ... Midnight!” They could feel the day pass.

They were at the corner, beside the little chandler’s shop which advertised to the moon its varieties of tea; and Alf paused once again.

“Half a tick,” he said. “No hurry, is there?”

“You’ll come in for a bit of supper,” Emmy urged. Then, plumbing his hesitation, she went on, in a voice that had steel somewhere in its depths. “They’ll both be gone to bed. She won’t be there.”

“Oh, I wasn’t thinking of that,” Alf declared, with unconvincing nonchalance.

“I’ll give you a drop of Pa’s beer,” Emmy said drily.

She took out a key, and held it up for his inspection.

“I say!” Alf pretended to be surprised at the sight of a key.

“Quite a big girl, aren’t I! Well, you see: there are two, and Pa never goes out. So we have one each. Saves a lot of bother.” As she spoke Emmy was unlocking the door and entering the house. “See, you can have supper with me, and then it won’t seem so far to walk home. And you can throw Madame Buck’s rinds at the back of the fire. You’ll like that; and so will she.”

Alf, now perfectly docile, and even thrilled with pleasure at the idea of being with her for a little while longer, followed Emmy into the passage, where the flickering gas showed too feeble a light to be of any service to them. Between the two walls they felt their way into the house, and Alf softly closed the door.

“Hang your hat and coat on the stand,” whispered Emmy, and went tiptoeing forward to the kitchen. It was in darkness. “Oo, she is a monkey! She’s let the fire out,” Emmy continued, in the same whisper. “Have you got a match? The gas is out.” She opened the kitchen door wide, and stood there taking off her hat, while Alf fumbled his way along the passage. “Be quick,” she said.

Alf pretended not to be able to find the matches, so that he might give her a hearty kiss in the darkness. He was laughing to himself because he had only succeeded, in his random venture, in kissing her chin; and then, when she broke away with a smothered protest and a half laugh, he put his hand in his pocket again for the match-box. The first match fizzed along the box as it was struck, and immediately went out.

“Oh, do hurry up!” cried Emmy in a whisper, thinking he was still sporting with her. “Don’t keep on larking about, Alf!”

“I’m not!” indignantly answered the delinquent. “It wouldn’t strike. Half a tick!”

He moved forward in the darkness, to be nearer the gas; and as he took the step his foot caught against something upon the floor. He exclaimed.

“Now what is it?” demanded Emmy. For answer Alf struck his match, and they both looked at the floor by Alf’s feet. Emmy gave a startled cry and dropped to her knees.

“Hul-lo!” said Alf; and with his lighted match raised he moved to the gas, stepping, as he did so, over the body of Pa Blanchard, which was lying at full length across the kitchen floor.