He slipped on his coat and handed her into the car. "Drop me in the High Street, will you--opposite to the Post Office?" he said to the chauffeur. "I'm expecting a letter." "I'm afraid," she said, as the car rolled down the drive, "that like most men you're rather prone to overact." With a little, happy laugh she snuggled up to him and slid her hand into his under the rug. "I shall be walking home, thank you, Thomas," said Joan as she got out of the car, and the man stood waiting for orders. He touched his cap, and they stood watching the car go down the High Street. Then she turned to Vane. "You'd better see about your letters," she said demurely. "And then we might go over the Castle. There is a most wonderful collection of oleographic paleographs brought over by the Americans when they discovered England. . . ." "In one second," threatened Vane, "I shall kiss you. And I don't know that they'd understand it here. . . ." "They'd think we were movie actors," she gurgled, falling into step beside him. "Do you know the way?" "In the days of my unregenerate youth I went to the races here," he answered. "One passes a prison or something. Anyway, does it matter?" She gave a sigh of utter contentment. "Nothing matters, my man--nothing at all--except that I'm with you. Only I want to get out into the open, with the fresh wind blowing on my face--and I want to sing for the joy of it. . . . Do you think if we sang up the town here they'd give me pennies?" "More probably lock us up as undesirable vagrants," laughed Vane. "It's a county town and they're rather particular. I'm not certain that happiness isn't an offence under the Defence of the Realm Act. Incidentally, I don't think there would be many convictions these days. . . ." She stopped for a moment and faced him. "That's not allowed, Derek; it's simply not allowed." "Your servant craves pardon," he answered gravely, and for a while they walked on in silence. They passed two ragged children who had collected on their faces more dirt than seemed humanly possible, and nothing would content Joan but that she should present each with a sixpence. "Poor little devils," and her voice was very soft. "What a life to look forward to, Derek--what a hideous existence. . . ." "It's all they've ever been brought up to." He put sixpence into each little grubby paw, and smiled down at the awestruck faces. "Go and spend it all on sweets," he told them, "and be really, wonderfully, happily sick for once in your lives. . . ." And then at last they turned a corner, and in front of them stretched the Downs. On their left the grim, frowning prison stood sombre and apparently lifeless, and as Joan passed it she gave a little shudder.