“Ianthe and me. She likes you.”
“She likes me! What do you say about me—in bed?”
He hoped Ianthe had not been indiscreet but Kate only said: “She doesn’t like you as I do—not like this.”
Soon they began to walk back toward the town. He smiled once when, as their footsteps clattered unregularly upon the hard clean road, she skipped to adjust the fall of her steps to his.
“Do not come any further,” she begged as they neared the street lamps. “It doesn’t matter, not at all, what I’ve said to you. It will be all right. I shall see you again.”
Once more she put her arms around his neck murmuring: “Goodnight, goodnight, goodnight.”
He watched her tripping away. When he turned homewards his mind was full of thoughts that were only dubiously pleasant. It was all very sweet, surprisingly sweet, but it left him uneasy. He managed to light a cigarette, but the wind blew smoke into his eyes, tore the charred end into fiery rags and tossed the sparkles across his shoulder. If it had only been Julia Tern!—or even Ianthe!—he would have been wholly happy, but this was disturbing. Kate was good-looking but these quietly passionate advances amazed him. Why had he been so responsive to her? He excused himself, it was quite simple; you could not let a woman down, a loving woman like that, not at once, a man should be kind. But what did she mean when she spoke of always falling in love with men who did not like her? He tossed the cigarette away and turned up the collar of his coat for the faintest fall of warm rain blew against his face like a soft beautiful net. He thrust his hands into his pockets and walked sharply and forgettingly home.
II
Two miles away from the little town was the big city with tramways, electric light, factories, canals, and tens of thousands of people, where a few nights later he met Ianthe. Walking around and away from the happy lighted streets they came out upon the bank of a canal where darkness and loneliness were intensified by the silent passage of black water whose current they could divine but could not see. As they stepped warily along the unguarded bank he embraced her. Even as he did so he cursed himself for a fool to be so fond of this wretched imp of a girl. In his heart he believed he disliked her, but he was not sure. She was childish, artful, luscious, stupid—this was no gesture for a man with any standards. Silently clutching each other they approached an iron bridge with lamps upon it and a lighted factory beyond it. The softly-moving water could now be seen—the lamps on the bridge let down thick rods of light into its quiet depths and beyond the arch the windows of the factory, inverted in the stream, bloomed like baskets of fire with flaming fringes among the eddies caused by the black pillars. A boy shuffled across the bridge whistling a tune; there was the rumble and trot of a cab. Then all sounds melted into a quiet without one wave of air. The unseen couple had kissed, Ianthe was replying to him:
“No, no, I like it, I like you.” She put her brow against his breast. “I like you, I like you.”