"Yes, and see the people, Peter, I love seeing them. Somehow by night
they're more natural than they are by day. I hate seeing people going to
work in droves, and men rushing about the city with dollars written all
across their faces. At night that's mostly finished with. One can see
ugly things, but some rather beautiful ones as well. Let's cross over.
There are more people that side."
They passed together down the big street. Even the theatres were darkened
to some extent, but taxis were about, and kept depositing their loads of
men and smiling women. The street-walks held Tommies, often plainly with
a sweet-heart from down east; men who sauntered along and scanned the
faces of the women; a newsboy or two; a few loungers waiting to pick up
odd coppers; and here and there a woman by herself. It was the usual
crowd, but they were in the mood to see the unusual in usual things.
In the Circus they lingered a little. Shrouded as it was, an atmosphere
of mystery hung over everything. Little groups that talked for a while
at the corners or made appointments, or met and broke up again, had the
air of conspirators in some great affair. The rush of cars down Regent
Street, and then this way and that, lent colour to the thought, and
it affected both of them. "What's brooding over it all, Julie?" Peter
half-whispered. "Can't you feel that there is something?"
She shrugged her shoulders, and then gave a little shiver. "Love, or what
men take for love," she said.
He clasped the hand that lay along his arm passionately. "Come along," he
said.
"Oh, this _is_ good, Peter," said Julie a few minutes later. She had
thrown off her wrap, and was standing by the fire while he arranged the
cigarettes, the biscuits, and a couple of drinks on the little table with
its shaded light. "Did you lock the door? Are we quite alone, we two, at
last, with all the world shut out?"
He came swiftly over to her, and took her in his arms for answer. He
pressed kisses on her hair, her lips, her neck, and she responded to
them.
"Oh, love, love," he said, "let's sit down and forget that there is
anything but you and I."
She broke from him with a little laugh of excitement. "We will, Peter,"
she said; "but I'm going to take off this dress and one or two other
things, and let my hair down. Then I'll come back."
"Take them off here," he said; "you needn't go away."
She looked at him and laughed again. "Help me, then," she said, and
turned her back for him to loosen her dress.
Clumsily he obeyed. He helped her off with the shimmering beautiful
thing, and put it carefully over a chair. With deft fingers she loosened
her hair, and he ran his fingers through it, and buried his face in the
thick growth of it. She untied a ribbon at her waist, and threw from
her one or two of her mysterious woman's things. Then, with a sigh of
utter abandonment, she threw herself into his arms.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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