The cinema was full. He was nonplussed, she could see, did not know what to do next--knew what he wanted (as she did, and hugged herself), but, being English, had a difficulty in saying it. He wanted her. That was natural enough. She knew herself to be desirable. It amused her to hear him proposing to see her home to her “Aunt’s”--for thus she had described her lodging. She let him. It seemed now she had only to go on letting him, and the riddle of life was solved. She had not known an hour before that there was a riddle. Now she only knew she was approaching a solution. They arrived in the narrow by-street near the cathedral as the clocks chimed four. At that hour the place was deserted. Their footsteps echoed, they might have been treading a world of their own. Madeleine felt it, but noticed that he was feeling something stronger. He had almost shed his English reserve--was talking volubly, about himself--how he had been twice in hospital, and must now go back to the fighting--how men like himself wanted a little comfort before they died. He spoke in English, but she understood most of the words and all the drift. His feelings coincided with hers and saved her the trouble of expressing them, to which she was unused and averse. At the door of her lodging they both stopped, she with her key in the lock, he looking at her with eyes that he immediately averted, and which pivoted round, in spite of him, to her. As she turned the key and opened the door, she said, with the feeling of turning something in her heart and opening it: “Here we are!” Inevitably, as if she had taught him the words, he was saying: “Don’t send me away, let me stay!” and with a great sigh of happiness such as she had felt once before in her life--another life, surely--she retreated into the dark entry before him with: “Well then, my poor friend!” * * * * * When Madeleine next had attention to spare for such matters, the chimes were telling six o’clock, and through the glass of the skylight-window a little star twinkled. She became conscious that he was slowly awakening from the stupor in which they had plunged each other, and was lying, open-eyed, waiting for her to move (just like him). Her mind sprang at once to the practical: “What time is your train?” “Gone this half-hour!” She sat up in alarm: “You will have trouble!” “They can’t tell to a few hours when I left camp!” Reassured, she passed on to the next thing. “You are hungry!” “Yes!”