“Oh, Henrietta!” he whispered loudly, transgressing his own law of silence and evoking an indignant hiss from an enthusiastic neighbour. He blushed with shame, then decided that to-night he could not really care, and signing to Henrietta to follow him, he tiptoed from the hall. “Did you hear? Did you hear?” he asked her. “I spoke! I—at a concert! I’ve never done that in my life before. I’ll never do it again! But, then, it was the first time you’d ever looked at me like that, Henrietta! And, oh Lord, we’ve forgotten the bag. I dare not go back for it.” “We’ll leave it, then,” she said indifferently. “I don’t want to see it again.” “But I like it. It’s an old friend. I’ve watched it—” He checked himself. “I’ll go. Wait here.” “Why aren’t we going home by train?” she asked, when he returned. “The angry man didn’t see me,” he said triumphantly. “Oh, because— well, you wanted somewhere to cry, didn’t you?” In the closed car she sat, for a time very straight, looking out of the window at the streets and the people, but when they had drawn away from the old city and left its grey stone houses behind and taken to the roads where slowly moving carts were creaking and snatches of talk from slow-tongued country people were heard and lost in the same moment, she sank back. The roads were dark. They were lined by tall, bare trees which seemed to challenge this swift passage and then decide to permit what they could not prevent, and for a mile or so the river gleamed darkly like an unsheathed sword in the night. “We shall soon be there, shan’t we?” she asked, in a small voice. “Yes, pretty soon.” “I wish we wouldn’t. I wish we could go on like this for ever, to the edge of the world and then drop over and forget.” He sighed. He could not arrange that for her but he told the man to drive more slowly. Against the dark upholstery of the car, her face was like a young moon, wan and too weary for its work. He slipped his arm under her back and drew her to him. Pulling off her hat, she found a place for her head against his shoulder and he shut his eyes. She breathed regularly and lightly, as though she were asleep, but presently she said, “Charles, I don’t mean anything by this, but you are the only friend I have. You won’t think I mean anything, will you?” He shook his head and it came to rest on hers. He, too, wished they might go on like this for ever, to the world’s edge.