‘What did she say?’

He laughed.

‘Oh, a piece about perhaps the police wouldn’t like it if you had Miss Silver down, and most likely she would be away on a case, but of course she really was too marvellous, only if Mr Madoc had really done it there wasn’t anything any one could do, was there? It’s rather a pity she’s had to come in on it at all, because now everyone in Bourne will know why Miss Silver is here.’

‘I expect they’d know anyhow. You can’t keep secrets in a village.’

He slipped a hand inside her arm as they walked.

‘What will they say when we’re seen to go off on the bus together in the morning?’

When her face looked so white and small it did something to his feelings. It pleased him to see her colour rise.

‘Perhaps they’ll think we’re eloping. It will be a dreadful disappointment when we come back in the evening with Miss Silver.’

‘It would be rather fun to elope. Shall we?’

Janice met his laughing, teasing look and said, There’s nowhere left to elope to till after the war.’

On the top of her mind she was rather pleased with this answer, but deep underneath something despaired and said, ‘It’s no good – I love him frightfully – I always have, and I can’t stop.’ It was like being caught by an undertow which took your feet off the bottom and carried you out to sea – it was too strong to resist. She didn’t want to resist it. The colour that had come up into her face died down until it was altogether gone. There was just that little bit of a white face, and the very bright no-coloured eyes that wouldn’t look away.

They were standing still on the edge of a tilted field. Nothing but sky, and air, and the green slope of the grass. Garth put an arm round her shoulders. He said in a startled voice, ‘What’s the matter, Jan?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Are you all right?’

She nodded. Now she could look away.

‘I’ve had a dreadful morning with Miss Madoc.’

‘Hasn’t she any relations who could come?’

‘I don’t think so. If we can make her feel that something is being done, it will help. You see, she’s made up her mind that he’s going to be hanged. She keeps on talking about it.’

The arm about her shoulders tightened.

‘My poor child!’

‘Oh, it doesn’t matter about me. It’s dreadful to see a much older person go to pieces like that.’

They walked on in silence for a minute or two. Garth kept his arm where it was. Presently he said, ‘Why has she made up her mind that he’s going to be hanged?’

She looked up at him. A shadow went across her eyes. She looked away.

‘I don’t know-’

‘Jan – does she think he did it?’

He felt her shake. She began to say, ‘I don’t know,’ but her voice stopped in the middle of a word. Her face quivered and she began to cry, quite quietly but with no more attempt at concealment than if she had still been ten years old.

Garth put his other arm round her.

‘Jan-Jan – darling! Don’t cry like that – please don’t!’

And then he was kissing her – her forehead, the curve of her cheek, the wet weeping eyes.

‘Jan, don’t, – I hate it! It’s going to be all right – we’ll make it all right. We’ll get Miss Silver. Jan, don’t cry any more! Here’s a handkerchief. I’m sure you haven’t got one.’

She stopped crying. How many other girls’ tears had he dried? She took the handkerchief and dried her own. Then she said, ‘Please let me go.’

He went on holding her. Funny little thing – darling little thing. He wanted to kiss her again; but somehow he couldn’t. Her eyes looked up at him with a sort of sorrowful candour.

‘I’m sorry about crying – men do hate it so. But it doesn’t mean very much – just Miss Madoc, and-and things.’

He put his cheek against hers for a moment. The words that had been in his mind said themselves aloud.

‘Funny little thing – darling little thing!’

This time she stepped back resolutely.

‘Thank you for being kind. We’d better go on walking.’

‘I don’t think I want to walk.’

She said in a grave little voice, ‘What do you want to do?’

The colour came up in his face.

‘I think I want to make love to you.’

Janice felt cold at her heart. She shook her head.

‘Oh, no – not really.’

He couldn’t help laughing.

‘And what to you mean by that?’

She stood and looked at him, very quiet and sad.

‘I just mean not really. It’s because I cried and you were sorry for me, and because you were fond of me when I was a little girl. I don’t want to have it spoiled. I’d rather be friends.’

Something happened when she said that. He didn’t quite know what it was. The relationship between them changed. He had the feeling that it had been wrenched, and that the wrench had been quite agonisingly painful, but whether it was Janice who felt it or he himself, he didn’t know. For just that one instant they had been so close that he didn’t know. He stared at her with troubled eyes and said, ‘What happened?’

And when she looked at him in surprise, ‘Jan – something happened then, but I don’t know what it was.’

They finished their walk. Neither of them talked very much. What they said had hardly any connection at all with what they were thinking. When they said good-bye Garth put a hand on her shoulder and looked at her in rather a puzzled way. Then he said, ‘The nine o’clock bus. Don’t be late,’ and she went back to Miss Madoc.

It seemed about a hundred years before she got to bed that night. She was so tired that she thought she would go to sleep at once, but she didn’t. As soon as she lay down and put out the light everything that she had said to Garth and everything that he had said to her came crowding into her mind and going round and round there like a gramophone record. ‘Shall we elope?’

‘There’s nowhere to elope to.’

‘I want to make love to you.’

‘Oh, no – not really.’ Over and over again the clear, vivid feeling of his cheek, against hers – not his kisses, but just the feeling of his cheek, hard and a little rough. It was the last thing she remembered before she slipped into a dream in which she was walking from Perry’s Halt because she had missed the bus. It was black dark without moon or stars, and somewhere right out in the open fields a clock was striking twelve. When the last stroke died away she could hear a footstep following her. It came into her mind that Mr Harsch had seen a ghost when he walked this way in the dark. She began to run, and woke up to see the moonlight slanting in across the floor.

MISS SILVER WAS going out to tea. She very often went out to tea on Sundays, and although this was no very special occasion it would be quite pleasant. A friend of her niece Ethel had recently come to live in Putney. Miss Silver had invited her to tea and found her agreeable, and this was a return visit. The afternoon being exceptionally mild, she wore her summer dress, now two years old, a navy blue artificial silk upon which a number of discordant colours were scattered in what looked like an imitation of the Morse-code. In deference to her idea of what was suitable, the skirt displayed no more than three or four inches of grey lisle thread stocking and black Oxford shoe. In case it should be chilly before she got back, she wore over it an old but still serviceable coat of black alpaca, and on her neat mousy hair a black straw hat with a glacé ribbon bow and a kind of trail of purple pansies. The neck of the dress was filled in by a cream net chemisette with a high boned collar and securely fastened by a brooch with a heavy gold border and a centre of plaited hair. Black cotton gloves, rather a shabby handbag, and a neat umbrella completed her toilet.

As she passed through her sitting-room on the way to the door she cast an approving glance about her. It was so comfortable, so cosy. The peacock-blue curtains were wearing so well, and the carpet really hardly looked at all rubbed even when the sun came slanting in. She considered her own prosperous lot with deep thankfulness. The curtains; the carpet; the curly yellow maple chairs upholstered in the same bright shade; the writing-table with its many drawers; the steel engravings of her favourite pictures – The Soul’s Awakening, The Black Brunswicker, Bubbles, and The Monarch of the Glen; the row of silver-framed photographs upon the mantlepiece – all spoke to her of the comfortable independence she had, under Providence, achieved by her own intelligent exertions.