So having won her pretty little battle she struggled no more, but put her lips where best they might be reached. VII Five minutes later he was speeding northward in a taxi. He had given the driver his home address, but he said a second later: “No; drive me out Hampstead way—keep going—any old where.” Then he lay back and let the wind rush through his hair, while his thoughts ran riot. His last words to Esme had been: “In a few days—I’ll arrange something.” He had meant it—he meant it still. She was nothing to him—only youth. But youth was splendid. What did anything else matter? He felt like some wild young thing of the forests when the “spring running” was in the air. A great sense of release possessed him. It was unlike any other sensation he had ever known. He was amazed it should have sprung from so trivial a source, but ignored to inquire more deeply into this line of thought. Had he but known it, the change that had come about in him—that curious, half-wicked ecstasy—was of the same emotional coinage that attacks the average boy when first he kisses a pretty chambermaid in the dark of a dormitory corridor. As the taxi climbed the Hampstead hill his thoughts turned to Eve, and he wondered how he should approach her in the telling of the affair. After all, there was nothing to tell yet—but later there would be. In his insane exuberance he decided that he would make no attempt to mask his actions. If he were not ashamed he would not act as though he were. Emphatically not. Let people say what they might, he would steer his own course—go his own way for all the world to see. Would Eve mind a great deal? Why should she? After all, there was but a partnership of brain and work which bound each to each. He wondered even if there would be any infidelity in what he proposed to do. But what had infidelity or partnership, or obligation or anything else, to do with it? He was an artist, unruled by law or convention. If he desired an excess of the brain he had indulged the desire—why not, then, an excess of the body. In the middle of the Heath he left the taxi, and tramped across the soft turf. He walked fast and in a large circle. As he went he sang to himself, and once, hat in hand, chased a butterfly as a schoolboy might have done. In the little clearing among the trees he came upon some boys and girls playing a boisterous laughing game. The girls were flappers with short skirts, and cheeks rosy with running. He stayed to watch them, and, fired by enthusiasm, shouted encouragement to pursuer and pursued. One of the bolder shouted back that he should join in, and without a thought he threw aside his coat and was racing and laughing with the rest. The game was postman’s knock, and as postman he caught the prettiest after a spirited chase, and kissed her as they collapsed into the tangled brambles. Still laughing and breathless, he picked up his coat and followed his way.