As it was, there were several things about that incident that the young girl—passionate and infatuated and innocent—did not know.
For one thing, there was the resolution that Paul Dampier took just after he had turned abruptly from her, had taken short leave of the others, and when he was striding down Whitehall to the bus that went past the door of his Camden Town rooms. And for another thing, there was the reason for that resolution.
Now, in the fairy-stories of modern life, it is (of the two principals) not always the Princess who has to be woken by a kiss, a touch, from the untroubled sleep of years. Sometimes it is the Prince who is suddenly stirred, jarred, or jolted broad awake by the touch, in some form or other, of Love. In Paul Dampier's case the every-day miracle had been wrought by the soft weight of that dove-breasted girl against his heart for no longer than he could count ten, by her sliding to the earth through an embrace that he had not intended for an embrace at all.
It hadn't seemed to matter what he had intended!
In a flock as of homing pigeons there flew back upon the young aviator all at once his thoughts of the Little Thing ever since he'd met her.
How he'd thought her so jolly to look at ("So sensible"—this he forgot). How topping and natural it had seemed to sit there with her in that field, talking to her, drinking with her out of one silver cup. How he'd found himself wanting to touch her curls; to span and squeeze her throat with his hands. How he'd been within an inch of summarily kissing that fox-glove pink mouth of hers, that night at the Dance....
And to-day, when he'd come to Westminster for another talk with that rather decent young Frenchman of Hugo's, when he hadn't thought of seeing the girl at all, what had happened? He'd actually held her clasped in his arms, as a sweetheart is clasped.
Only by a sheer accident, of course.
Yes, but an accident that had left impressed on every fibre of him the feeling of that warm and breathing burden which seemed even yet to rest against his quickened heart.