In that heart there surged up a clamorous impulse to go back at once. To snatch her up for the second time in his arms, and not to let her go again, either. To satisfy that hunger of his fingers and lips for the touch of her——
"Hold hard!" muttered the boy to himself. "Hang it all, this won't do."
For he had found himself actually turning back, his face set towards the Abbey.
He spun round on the hot pavement towards home again.
"Look here; can't have this!" he told himself grimly as he walked on, swinging his straw hat in his hand, towards Trafalgar Square. "At this rate I shall be making an ass of myself before I know where I am; going and falling in—going and getting myself much too dashed fond of the Little Thing."
Yes! He now saw that he was in some danger of that.
And if it did come to anything, he mused, walking among the London summer crowd, it wouldn't be one of these Fancy-dress-dance flirtations. Not that sort of girl. "Nor was he; really." Not that sort of man, he meant. Sort of thing never had amused him, much; not, he knew, because he was cold-blooded ("Lord, no!") but partly because he'd had such stacks of other things to do, partly because—because he'd always thought it ought to be (and could be) so much more—well, amusing than it was. This other. This with the Little Thing—he somehow knew that it would have to be "for keeps."
And that he couldn't have. Good Lord, no! There could be no question—Great Scott!
For yes, if there was anything between him and the Little Thing, it would have to be an engagement. Marriage, and all that.
And Paul Dampier didn't intend to get married. Out of the question for him.