She was excited, but she did not therefore feel at his mercy. It happened as Sally had foreseen. As soon as she was past the shops she heard his urgent voice at her elbow--"Sally!" For a moment she ignored it. Then she turned, very coldly, and with a slight sneer looked at him. They were side by side now. He was keeping step with her as easily as he could have kept step with a child. "Sally," he repeated. Sally stopped dead. "What are you following me for?" she asked, viciously. "Why can't you leave me alone? Following me like that! I never heard of such a thing." "I been waiting outside for you all the time. I've had no grub. I followed you from the house. I saw you start out just as I was getting home." "Well, what of it? I didn't ask you to follow me, did I?" demanded Sally. But in the darkness of the street her eyes softened. Her heart swelled at the thought that he had waited for her in the Hornsey Road for fully two hours. Toby took her defiance as a matter of course. He was still standing doggedly before her, and as she began once again to walk rapidly in the direction of home he followed her, half a step behind. At the darkest part of the road he put out a hand to check her progress. Sally snatched away her arm, but he had been prepared for that, and caught her immediately. He held her, panting, as she pressed against a big stone gate-post. "Let me be!" cried Sally, hoarsely and breathlessly. "Let me be." She did not scream. She was too impressed by his exhibition of strength. He continued to hold her, and they stood breast to breast, Sally panting, and Toby with a kind of stolid determination. "Will you come for a walk quietly?" he asked, jerking his head. "No," said Sally, "I won't." There was no mercy, no humility. Only a hard defiance. "Yes, you will." He pulled her towards him, so that Sally could not escape. She was now wholly within the circle of his arm, not struggling, but with her poor thin arms staving him off. Her body was tense. But she made no sound, and if there were any passers they knew that this was only a typical lovers' tiff, common to the neighbourhood, and largely a matter of physical strength and feminine vituperation. "Yes, you will. See? Come on, Sally." "You let me go," she demanded. "Say you'll come. I'll let you go the moment you say that." Sally hesitated, then bowed her head in a slow acquiescence. He released her, and she ran; but he easily overtook her, and she was once again held, still with her back to a pillar. Both were now breathing hard. Sally's head was lowered. She was suffocating. She seemed to be in complete darkness. And she had no sense of what was happening. The mere technique of the row absorbed her. They were almost like two quarrelling cats, both sullen, both glowering and full of resentment rather than burning anger. "Will you come?" asked Toby. "Just for a walk. Half an hour." "What d'you want me to come for?" "Want to talk to you."