They could not see her when she sat down and laid her book beside her on the bench. She did not even open it, but sat and looked at the greenery of the shrubs before her. She was very still, and she looked as if she saw more than mere leaves and branches. After a few minutes she got up slowly and went to a tall bush of lilac. She plucked several leaves and carried them back to her bench, somewhat as if she were a girl moving in a dream. Then, with a tiny shadow of a smile, she took a long pin from under the lapel of her coat and, leaning forward, began to prick out a pattern on the leaf she had laid on the wooden seat. She was in the midst of doing it--had indeed decorated two or three--when she found herself turning her head to listen to something. It was a quick, buoyant marching step--not a nursemaid's, not a gardener's, and it was coming towards her corner as if with intention--and she suddenly knew that she was listening as if the intention concerned herself. This was only because there are psychological moments, moods, conditions at once physical and mental when every incident in life assumes the significance of intention--because unconsciously or consciously one is _waiting_. Here was a crisp tread somehow conveying a suggestion of familiar happy eagerness. The tall young soldier who appeared from behind the clump of shrubs and stood before her with a laughing salute had evidently come hurriedly. And the hurry and laughter extraordinarily brought back the Donal who had sprung upon her years ago from dramatic ambush. It was Donal Muir who had come. "I saw you from a friend's house across the street," he said. "I followed you." He made no apology and it did not even cross her mind that apology was conventionally necessary. He sat down beside her and his effect--though it did not express itself physically--was that of one who was breathing quickly. The clear blueness of his gaze seemed to enfold and cover her. The wonderfulness of him was the surrounding atmosphere she had felt as a little child. "The whole world is rocking to and fro," he said. "It has gone mad. We are all mad. There is no time to wait for anything." "I know! I know!" she whispered, because her pretty breast was rising and falling, and she had scarcely breath left to speak with. Even as he looked down at her, and she up at him, the colour and laughter died out of him. Some suddenly returning memory brought a black cloud into his eyes and made him pale. He caught hold of both her hands and pressed them quite hard against his bowed face. He did not kiss them but held them against his cheek. "It is terrible," he said. Without being told she knew what he meant. "You have been hearing new horrible things?" she said. What she guessed was that they were the kind of things she had shuddered at, feeling her blood at once hot and cold. He lifted his face but did not release her hands.