He had hurried so as not to keep her waiting. By the time he had brought his car round to the hotel the clocks were striking eleven. He throttled down his engine; it didn’t seem worth while shutting it off, since she might appear at any moment. Its muffled throbbing in the shadowy street seemed the panting of his heart How impatient he was to see her! Running up the steps, he peered into the hall.

The landlady approached him with a severe expression. “She sent word for me to tell you she’d be down directly. These—these are strange goings-on. Dangerous vagaries, I call them. It’s none of my business—me not being your mother nor related; but I do hope you know what you’re doing, young gentleman.”

The young gentleman laughed. “We shan’t come to any harm,” he assured her.

The company was breaking up. The vaulted hall and passages echoed with laughter, the jingling of armor and snatches of songs. Knights and ladies were bidding each other extravagant farewells, enacting the gallantries which went with their parts. Men dropped to one knee and pressed their lips to slender hands. Flower faces drooped above them mockingly—and not so mockingly after all, perhaps; for when the Pied Piper of Love makes his music, any heart that is hungry may follow. Those of them who were stopping at the inn caught up their lighted candles. By twos and threes, with backward glances, casting long shadows on the wall, they drifted up the wide carved stairs. Others, who had cheaper quarters, sauntered out into the summer stillness. The porter, like a relentless guardian of morals, stood with his hand upon the door, waiting sourly for the last of them to be gone.

Teddy followed them out. As the girls passed beneath the hotel windows, they dragged on their escorts’ arms, raising their faces and calling one final good-night to their friends who were getting into bed. Heads popped out, and stared down between the stars and the pavement. All kinds of heads. Heads with helmets on. Close-cropped ordinary heads. Heads which floated in a mist of trailing locks. Some one struck up a song; there, in the medieval moonlit street, these romance people danced. Away through the shadows they danced, the booming accompaniment of the men’s voices growing fainter, fainter, fainter, till at last even the clear eagerness of the girls’ singing was lost.

When Teddy turned to reenter the inn, the porter had barred the door. From the steep wall of windows which rose sheer to the stars all the different kinds of heads had been withdrawn. The only sound was the throb-throb-throbbing of the engine like the thump-thump-thumping of his heart.

He sat down on the steps to wait for her. She was a terribly long while in coming. It was nearly half-past eleven. Thirty minutes ago she had sent him word that she would be down “directly.”

“Of course,” he told himself, “there’s no need for hurry. It’s about a hundred and forty miles to London, and we’ve all the night before us.”

He was trying to decide to ring the bell, when the door opened noisily, and the porter stumbled out, bringing her luggage. As he helped Teddy strap it on the back of the car, he answered his questions gruffly: “Doin’! I don’t know wot she’s doin’. Said she’d be down direckly, which means whenever she chooses. The inkinsideration of these actresses beats all. Hurry ’er! Me hurry ’er! No, mister, she’s not the hurryin’ sort; she hurries other folk instead. I don’t know wot the world’s comin’ to, I’m sure. Thank you, sir.” He slipped the half-crown into his pocket “She’s a ’andsome lady; I will say that for ’er.”

And then she appeared, standing framed in the doorway, with the weak light from the hall throwing a golden mist about her. Over her head a hood was drawn, shadowing her features. Her cloak was gathered round her, so that beneath its folds she was recognizable only by her slightness. He felt that, however she had disguised herself, there would have been something in her presence that would have called to him.

“Have I kept you waiting long?” In the old days her apologies had always taken the interrogative form; now, as then, she hurried on, not risking an answer: “You see, I had to say ’good-by’ to everybody. It wouldn’t have been kind to have slipped off and left them. I felt sure you’d understand. And I did send down messages. You’re not cross?”

Cross! She spoke the word caressingly. Her voice sank into a trembling laugh, as though she herself was aware of the absurdity of such a question. Her explanation was totally inadequate, and yet how adorable in its childlike eagerness to conciliate and to avoid unpleasantness!

“Cross! Why, of course not. I was only anxious—a tiny bit afraid that you weren’t coming.”

He sounded so friendly that he convinced her. She sighed contentedly. “Has it seemed very long?”

He looked up from inspecting his lamps. She had come down the steps to the pavement. The porter had entered the hotel; inside he was shooting the last bolt into its socket.

He held his breath. In the moon-washed street after all these years he was alone with her.

“Without you, waiting would always seem long.”

She started. Glanced back across her shoulder. The sounds on the other side of the door had stopped. There was no retreat. Turning to him with girlish dignity, she said: “It’s very kind of you to have offered to help me, but—— I don’t want you to say things like that. We’ll enjoy ourselves much better if we’re sensible.”

He felt a sudden shame, as though she had accused him of taking advantage of her defenselessness. All the things he had been on the point of telling her—he must postpone them. Presently she would remember; her own heart would tell her.

“It was foolish of me,” he said humbly.

She laughed softly and shook back her head. Her hair lay upon her shoulders like a schoolgirl’s. “There now, we understand each other. Why do men always spoil things before they’re started by making stupid love?”

“Do they?”

“Well, don’t they?” She smiled tolerantly. “Let’s be friends. If we’re sensible, we can have such a jolly trip to London—such a lark. No more sentimentals—promise—— Shake hands on it.”

As she held out both her hands, the cloak fell open, revealing her pageant costume. She noticed that his eyes rested on it. “Yes, I kept my bargain—even to the sandals.” The glimmer of her feet peeped out for a second beneath the hem of her skirt. “Now, how about making a start?”

He helped her into the seat which, up to now, had reproached him with its emptiness. He didn’t have to imagine any longer.

He climbed in beside her. “Are you warm?”

“Very comfy.”

“What time do you want to get there? I can get you there by seven or eight, doing twenty an hour—that’s to say, if nothing goes wrong.”

“Do me splendidly. I ought to tell you while I remember: I think this is awfully decent of you.”

“Not decent at all” He hesitated. “It’s not decent because—well, because I always told myself that I’d do something like this some day.”

“Remember your promise.” She held up a warning finger.

“You didn’t let me finish. What I meant to say was that, ever since I was a little kid, I’ve played at rescuing princesses.”

She looked up at him searchingly, then bit her lip to keep back her thoughts. “What a queer game to play!” That was all.

Like a robber bee, seeking honey while the garden of the world slept, the car sped humming through the silver town. Gray, shuttered houses faded upon the darkness like a dream that was spent. They were in the open country now, the white road before them, trees and hedges leaping to attention like lazy sentinels as the lamps flared on them, and throwing themselves down to rest again before the droning of the engine was gone.

“‘The Island Valley of Avilion, where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow.’ Know that?”

She nodded. “It sounds so peaceful, doesn’t it? Like a cold hand laid on an aching forehead. That’s the way those words have felt to me sometimes in the glare and bustle of New York. They’ve come to me when I’ve been walking up Fifth Avenue, and it’s been like a door opening into a green still orchard, somewhere inside my head.”

“You’re sorry to leave it? Why should we leave it? Let’s turn back.”

He slowed down the car.

“Oh, you foolish! I’ve got to catch my boat to-morrow. And besides——” She paused and reflected. “Besides, I’m never so very sorry to leave anything. I’m an odd girl” (The same old phrase, “D’you think I’m an odd child, Teddy?”) “I’m never too sorry to say good-by. I want to push on and on. I’m always looking ahead.”

“To what?”

“Things.” She glanced away into the vagueness of the ghostly meadows. “The kind of things that people do look forward to.”

He wanted to get her to talk about herself—about her past. He could make sure, then, and tell her—tell her everything without frightening her. So he said: “I don’t mean people. I mean girls. What kind of things do girls look forward to?”

Had she shared his hours of remembering? Had it really been her thoughts that had touched him in that little room in Eden Row? He stooped his head nearer to listen. It seemed to him that, above the throbbing of the engine, he could hear the blood dripping in his heart.

She stared into his eyes with her old suspicion—the veiled stare, half hostile, which a girl gives a man when she fears that he is going to kiss her.

“Girls look forward to—what kind of things?” she echoed. “I can’t tell. The same kind of things that men look forward to, I expect. The surprise things, and—yes, the excitements, most of all.”

“Like ou............