“No,” he said almost roughly, “we’ve got to talk; this kind of thing must be settled one way or the other.” “Please, don’t be cross.” Her voice was very gentle; he could feel her breath on his cheek. “Ah, if you knew what I’d been suffering all day, waiting for you, looking forward, aching for these minutes; no, you mustn’t be cruel to me now.” But he stared in front of him, looking into the black depths of the trees that surrounded them on every side. “No, there’s more in it than I thought. What are we going to do? What’s going to happen afterwards? Don’t you see, we must be sensible about it?” “No,” she said, holding his hand. “There is no time for that. We can be sensible afterwards. Didn’t you hear at dinner? Fred is going away on Thursday night; we have that, at any rate.” “No,” he said, roughly breaking away from her, “we must not.” But she pressed up against him. Her arm passed slowly round his neck and her fingers touched, for a moment, his cheek. “No; listen. Don’t you see what will happen if we don’t take it? All our lives we’ll know that we’ve missed it. There’s something that we might have had—some life, some experience. At any rate we had lived once, out of our stuffy lives, our stupid, dull humdrum. Oh! I tell you, you mustn’t miss it! You’ll always regret, you’ll always regret!” Her whole body was pressed against his. He tried to push her away with his hand. For a moment he thought that he saw Tony watching him and then turning away, sadly, scornfully. And then it swept over him like a wave. He crushed her in his arms; for some minutes the world had stopped. Then again he let her go. “Ah!” she said, smiling and touching her dress with her fingers. “You are dreadfully strong. I did not know how strong. But I like it. And now Thursday night will be ours; glorious, wonderful, never to be forgotten. I must go. They’ll be wondering. You’d better not come back with me. Good-night, darling!” She bent down, kissed him and disappeared. But he sat there, his hands gripping his knees. What sort of scum was he? He, a man? _This_ then was the fine new thing that Tony and Punch had shown him. _This_ the kind of world! _This_ the great experience. Life! _No._ With all his soul he knew that it was not; with all his soul he knew that the devil and all his angels were pressing about his path—laughing, laughing. And the moon rose behind the trees and the stars danced between the branches. CHAPTER XVII MORNING AND AFTERNOON OF THE TWENTY-SEVENTH—TONY, MARADICK, JANET, AND MISS MINNS HAVE A RIDE AFTER THE WEDDING