It’s to be our day, Teddy.”

The gate swung to behind them with a clang. He looked back and saw his father, framed in the window; then the palings of the next-door garden shut him out He was alone with her. It was as though with the clanging of the gate he had said “good-by” to childish things forever.

The world shone forth to meet them, romantic with frost and lacquered with ice. It was as though the sky had rained molten glass which, spreading out across trees, houses and pavements, had covered them with a skin of burning glory. Eden Row sparkled quaint and old-fashioned as a Christmas card. The river, which followed its length, gleamed like a bared saber. Windows, in the cliff-line of crooked houses, were jewels which glittered smoothly in the sunlight In the park, beyond the river, black boughs of trees were hieroglyphics carved on glaciers of cloud. Chimneys were top-hatted sentinels, crouching above smoldering camp-fires. Overhead the golden gong of the sun hung silent At any moment it seemed that a cloud must strike it and the brittle boom of the impact would mutter through the heavens. It was a world transformed—no longer a prison swung out into the void in which men and women struggled, and misunderstood, and loved and, in their loving, died.

Vashti felt for his hand. He wanted to take it and yet—— If he did, people who didn’t understand would think him nothing but a little boy. What he really wanted was to take her arm; he couldn’t reach up to that “Don’t you want to hold it?”

He laughed shyly and slipped his fingers softly into hers.

As they passed Orchid Lodge, standing flush with the pavement, she glanced up at the second story, where the line of windows commenced.

“The people who live there hate me. They’ll hate me more presently. I can’t blame them.”

She hurried her steps. Drawing a breath of relief, she whispered, “Look back and tell me whether anybody saw us.”

He looked back. Two figures were emerging from the doorway—one excessively fat, the other so lean that he looked like a straight line.

“Only the murd—— I mean Mr. Sheerug and Mr. Hughes. I don’t think they saw us.”

“That’s all right.”

She laughed merrily—not on one note as most people laugh, but all up and down the scale. The sparkle of morning was in her voice. Like a flash out of a happy dream she moved through the ice-cold world. People turned to gaze after her. A policeman, stamping his feet on the look-out for some attractive housemaid, touched his helmet She nodded.

“D’you know him?”

“Never clapped eyes on him in my life. A pretty woman belongs to the whole world, Teddy.”

Butcher boys, hopping down from carts, stood thunderstruck. After she had passed they whistled, giving vent to their approbation. Teddy had the satisfaction of knowing that he was envied; he snuggled his hand more closely into hers. Even Mr. Yaffon, the man who was as faded as a memory, raised dim eyes and shrunk against the wall, stung into painful life. His little dog waddled ahead, doing her best to coax him to come on, trying to say, “None of that, Master. You’ve done it once; please not a second time.”

Was it only Teddy’s fancy—the fancy of every lover since the world was created—that everything, animate and inanimate, was jealous of him? Streets seemed to blaze at her coming. Sparrows flew down and chirped noisily in the gutters, as though they felt that where she was there should be singing. Famished trees shivered and broke their silence, mumbling hoarse apologies: “It isn’t our fault Winter’s given us colds in the head. If we had our way, we’d be leafy for you.”

Years later Teddy looked back and questioned, was it love that the little boy felt that winter’s morning? He had experienced what the grown world calls real love by then, and yet he couldn’t see the difference, except that real love is more afraid, thinks more of itself and is more exacting. If love be a divine uplifting, a desirable madness, a mirage of fine deception which exists only in the lover’s brain, then he felt it that morning. And he felt it in all its goodness, without the manifold doubts as to ulterior motives, without the unstable tenderness which so swiftly changes to utterest cruelty, and without the need to crush in order to make certain. In his love of Vashti he came nearer to the white standards of chivalry than was ever again to be his lot In later years he asked himself, was she really so incredibly beautiful? Did her step have the lightness, her face the bewitching power, her voice the gentleness he had imagined? By that time he had learnt the cynical wisdom which wonders, “What is this hand that I hold so fast, more than any other hand? What are these lips? Flesh—-there are others as warm and beautiful Is this meeting love or is it chance?”

He was far from that blighting caution yet Merely to be allowed to serve her, if it could help her to be allowed to die for her, to be allowed to give his all—he asked no more. He carried his all in an ill-wrapped parcel beneath his arm. She observed it.

“Holloa! Brought your luggage?”

“Not my luggage.”

“Then what?”

He flushed. “Can’t tell you yet.”

“Oh, but tell me!”

“I—I couldn’t here—not where every one’s passing.”

“Something for me?” she guessed.

He nodded.

Higher up the street, outside a public house, a hansom cab was standing.

“I must know,” she laughed. “Can’t wait another second. We’ll be alone in that.”

“Where to?” asked the cabby, peering through the trap.

“Anywhere. Piccadilly Circus.”

The doors closed as if folded by invisible hands. The window lowered. They were in a little house which fled across main thoroughfares, up side streets, round corners. He was more alone with her than ever. He could feel the warmth of her furs. He could hear her draw her breath.

“Well?” she asked.

As he placed it in her lap the parcel jingled. “I saved it,” he explained, “for us—for you and me, because of what somebody told me.”

She tore the paper off. In her hands was a wooden box with MARRIAGE inked across it.

“Marriage!” She raised it to her ear and shook it “Money!”

Teddy gazed straight before him. The pounding of the horse’s hoofs seemed no louder than the pounding of his heart. ’Harriet said that five pounds were the least that a lady would expect. “And so—and so—— There’s five pounds.”

He wasn’t looking at her. He didn’t dare to look at her. And so he couldn’t be sure whether she had sighed or laughed. A horrible fear struck him: she might be wondering how so young a person could come honestly by so large a fortune. He spoke quickly. “It’s mine, all of it I asked for money for Christmas. Jimmie Boy paid me for going into his picture; and Hal and Mrs. Sheerug—they gave me——”

“And it’s for me?”

“Why, of course.”

“And it’s all you’ve got—everything you have in the world?” Her arm slipped about him. “You’re the little god Love, Teddy; that’s what you are.”

Traffic was growing thick about them. They came to a crossing where a policeman held up his hand. Through the panes misted over by their breath, they watched the crawling caravan of carts and buses. In the sudden cessation from motion it seemed to Teddy that the eyes of the world were gazing in on them. “A little boy and a grown lady!” they were saying. “He wants to be her husband!” And then they laughed. Not till they were traveling again did he pick up his courage.

“Can we—can we——”

“Can we what?”

“Be married to-day? You said ‘some day’ when you promised.”

For her it was a strange situation, as absurd as it was pathetic. For a moment she tried not to take him seriously, then she glanced down at the eager face, the Eton suit, the clasped hands. In his childish world the make-believe was real. For him the faery tale, enacted for her own diversion, had been a promise. She felt angry with herself—as angry as a sportsman who, intending to miss, has brought down a songbird. Playing at love was her recreation. She couldn’t help it—it was in her blood: her approach to everything masculine was by way of fascination. She felt herself a goddess; it was life to her to be worshiped. All men’s friendships had to be love affairs or else they were insipid; on her side she pledged herself to no more than friendship. Not to be adored piqued her.

But to have flirted with a child! To have filled him with dreams and to have broken down his shyness! As she sat there with his box, labeled MARRIAGE, in her lap, she wondered what was best to be done. If she told him it was a jest, she would rub the dust off the moth-wings of his faith forever. There was only one thing: to continue the extravagant pretense.

“It’s splendid of you, Teddy, to have saved so much.”

“Is it much? Really much?”

“Well, isn’t it?”

His high spirits came back. He laughed and leant his head against her shoulder. “I don’t know. I’m not very old yet.”

“It’s because of that——” She knitted her brows, puzzling how she could break the news to him most gently. In the back of her mind she smiled to remember how much this consideration would have meant to some of her lovers. “It’s because you’re not so very old yet, that I think we ought to wait a year.”

“A year!” He sat up and stared. “But a year’s a whole twelve months!”

She patted his hand. “You wouldn’t like to have people laugh at me, would you? A year would give you time to grow up. And besides, before I marry, there are so many things to be done. I haven’t told you, but I’m going to America almost directly—going to sing there. Five pounds is a terrific lot of money in England, but in America it would soon get spent. Even though you were my husband, you wouldn’t be able to come. You’d have to stay here alone in our new house, and that wouldn’t be very jolly.”

He saw his dream crumbling and tried to be a man; but his lip trembled. “I don’t think—— Perhaps you never meant your promise.”

The trap-door in the roof opened. The hoarse voice of the cabby intruded. “’Ere we are. Piccadilly Circus.”

Vashti felt for her purse in her muff. It wasn’t there. She thought for a minute, then gave the man an address and told him to drive on.

“But I did mean my promise,” she assured Teddy. “Why, a year’s not long. Cheer up. Think of all the fun we’ll have writing letters. Harriet can’t have told you properly about marriage. One has to be very careful. One has to get a house and buy things for it. There are heaps of things to be bought when one gets married.”

“And wouldn’t five pounds be enough?”

She shook her head sorrowfully. “Not quite enough. But don’t let’s think about it. This is our day, Teddy, and we’re going to be happy. Guess where I’m taking you; it proves that I meant my promise.”

When he couldn’t guess, she bent over him and whispered. He clapped his hands. “To see a house!”

“............