The night was drear. The dark had none of the velvet comfort that goes with the soft blackness before the rising of the moon. Its touch was harsh, its suggestion sinister. The elm over the gate creaked with rheumatic movement, while the brittle autumn leaves whispered restlessly, like sleepers too tired to be still. The couple stayed beneath. “You’ll be meeting him, likely?” Lup asked suddenly, with no hint of jealousy or vexation in his voice. He had taken his dismissal, and had no intention of presuming on old rights. “Not I!” Francey answered, with a touch of impatience. “Why, they say he takes a different girl to the café every week! The men in the smoke-room run a sweep as to which it will be! I came down in the car for fear you got across with him. He was a bit above himself to-night, our friend Brack.” “You were getting on with him rarely at supper.” “Yes.” She fell thoughtful. “I can talk to him, but that’s all. It’s like playing a game with somebody of your own form for the sheer pleasure of being in sympathy with that side of them. You may not give a snap of the fingers for them otherwise, but at the moment it doesn’t count. _You_ don’t feel like that, do you?” “No,” Lup said simply. “I like folks, or I can’t abide them. I’m keen to clap eyes on them and have a crack, or else I want no dealings with them whatever. I’ll not drink with them, nor sell with them, nor pass the time o’ day unless I’m put to it. I’ve no use for them at all.” “That’s simple, Lup, but it’s blind--blind and narrow! Folk are not all white or black; they’ve different sides, different shades. You can pick out the one you want, and leave the rest. Even Brack has his points.” “Like enough,” he answered carelessly. “He’s welcome to them as long as he keeps out of my road----” and she laughed a little and was silent. Brack’s “points” did not interest her overmuch, either. They had not quarrelled, these two. Even in the first bitterness of rejection he had recognised that she was not moved by cruel or petty perversity. She had simply faded out of his reach when he was surest of her, retreating behind some barrier which would fall to neither of them. He had certainly been passionately hurt and deeply angry, but he had never been unjust. Unable to see her standpoint, he yet bowed to it; only he could not bring himself to stay and suffer. “When do you go?” she asked suddenly. He told her, and then: “_Need_ you go?” she added somewhat nervously, Lancaster’s embassy in mind. “There’s your father and mother--you could keep away--_need_ you go?” He answered briefly, turning his head away from her even in the darkness, and she held her tongue; but after a while she began again in stumbling, disjointed phrases like bodiless thoughts not shaped for the clothing of speech.