"My dear Golden, if you could only see him at the Honeycomb!"
And there seemed to resound in her mind echoes of Captain Ross's voice at the Honeycomb—or were they echoes of Mrs. Newton's mimicries of Captain Ross?
"Hullo—yes?" curtly down the telephone in his office where Olwen had come for instructions. "Yes; Miss Howel-Jones is working on the Honeycomb. You will find her number in room 0369——" Then, in an iron tone to Olwen, "Miss Howel-Jones, I should be glad if you would give your correct telephone number to any friends whom you wish to ring you up...."
And so on. Was that the manner of a man who cares?
More echoes were broken in upon by the gentler voice of Golden.
"I don't need to see him at any Honeycomb. I saw it in one, at the Eagle Hut. If he's different in the office, why, that's his fine sense of duty, and you ought to like him for that.... Jack thinks a deal of Captain Ross. So does Mrs. Cartwright, and she's a real, intelligent woman. Why, do you know, just before Captain Ross came on to the meeting tonight, your little friend Mrs. Newton said something about him; I think she likes to make fun of him a little. Mrs. Cartwright said, quite quietly, 'I have a great affection for Captain Ross!'
"I guess she wouldn't have said that without some reason for liking him. Jack thinks he's fine," young Awdas's sweetheart concluded her plea for the absent. "Don't you like him, Olwen?"
There was a silence as the two girls walked up Tottenham Court Road, comparatively empty at this time of the evening.
Then Olwen drew a quick little breath, turned up her face to her friend's, and let out an emphatic "I did like him." Then in a soft hurry of words, "I liked him all that time in France. Yes. Awfully! I thought of him and thought of him, Golden. It seemed to make everything ... beautiful to me." Then a little ashamed laugh, "I was——silly, then!"
"Silly?" repeated her friend gently. "That's not the way it seems to me. That's a lovely thing in a girl's life." She lifted her chin over the leopard-skin stole and looked ahead to the stars above the murky lamps, to the skies in which lay her own lover's pathless way. "Make everything beautiful; that's what love should do. I know," said Golden, shyly, but proudly. "I didn't know for certain, until Jack showed me. I'm so pleased you know too...."