"We shall," Mr. Vavasour announced, with conviction. "Good night." He swept his hat from his head with a flourish and Norah shook hands with him. She had been rather afraid all the way back that he would try to kiss her good night, but gentle blood and the bright arc-lamp under which they were standing combined to deter him, and they parted as ceremoniously as if his V-shaped waistcoat was really a medieval doublet. "Oh, it _was_ you," said Roland. "How do you mean it _was_ me? Who did you think it was?" "Do you know what the time is? Half past ten!" "Thanks very much," said Norah, sarcastically. "The wrist-watch you gave me at Christmas is not yet broken." "Don't be silly, Norah," he protested. "Father's in an awful wax. I've been hanging about here for the last half-hour, because I couldn't stand it." They were walking quickly down Lonsdale Road, and Norah was thinking how clumsily he walked compared with Mr. Vavasour and yet how much better looking he was. "Did Wilfred come?" she asked. Her brother nodded. "Yes, but I told him you weren't in, and he went off in a bit of a gloom." They had reached the gate of No. 17 by now, and the house seemed to Norah unreasonably hushed for this hour of the evening. Beyond the railway line the sky was lit up with the glare of the Exhibition, and the music that the military band was playing--it was a selection from "The Earl and the Girl"--was distinctly audible. "Why should father object to my going out in the evening?" she asked, turning to her brother sharply. "He used to object to your smoking." Roland removed from his mouth the large pipe and thought ponderously for a minute. It was quite true that only two years ago his father had objected to his smoking, and that with great difficulty he had been able to persuade him that bank clerks always smoked. Since that struggle his father had yielded him a grudging admission that he was grown up. The long years before he should be a bank manager rose like a huge array of black clouds before his vision, and though he disapproved of sisters acting on their own initiative, something in this autumnal night--perhaps it was only the sound of the distant band--created in him a sudden sympathy with any aspirations to freedom. Perhaps, if Norah had encouraged him at that moment, he would have stood up for her independence; but he felt that his company only irritated her and without a word he led the way up the steps, dimly aware that he and she had already set foot upon the diverging paths of their lives.