There was a merle singing in the elm-tree above, and a thrush was calling for its mate, and the wood-pigeons were cooing softly in the orchard over the hedge; everything was so glad and happy and full of life and love on this May morning; every voice in nature was pleading for him.
Her face was dreadfully pale, and her lips were quivering, and her heart was beating like a hammer. She looked up into his face with a strange white terror in her eyes, and she saw the scarf round his throat. It was the coloured striped scarf of his college, and he wore it twisted on that balmy morning round his throat. The sight of that scarf decided her.
'I think you must go back to work,' she said softly, with just a little wan smile.
He caught her in his arms, to his heart, and kissed her on the forehead.
'God bless you, Lucy!' he said—'God bless you, darling!'
The pressure of his arms, the strange, sweet pressure of his warm lips on her forehead, brought the blood back to her heart, to her cheeks, and she drew herself away, flushing scarlet.
A Newnham girl came in at one end of the lane, and a Selwyn man came in at the other, and they went back to their respective colleges and told the tale. It was all over Newnham at breakfast-time that Lucy had been seen kissing a man in broad daylight just outside the walls of the college.
The old, old story has been told a great many times, in a great many ways, but it had never been told at Newnham before or at Girton in such a barefaced way. It will be told in the public streets next, or perhaps in the Senate House.