“A sense of eternity—what a phrase that is!”
Light, quick footsteps sounded on the path; then the heavier tread of a man. The girl stopped suddenly, touched her companion’s arm, and, when he looked down, laughed breathlessly—an odd laugh, half-confidential, half-embarrassed.
“Oh, Torwood,” she exclaimed, “I do so love this East!”
He threw his arm round her, and, with a tremendous air of proprietorship, almost dragged her indoors. Little gasps of excitement were her show of protest. As they passed through the room below the man could be heard speaking quick words to her, in a voice unevenly controlled; speaking with strange disregard for the public room’s bleak emptiness and for the nearness of those who were sleeping, for the stare of electric bulbs, which, when they shine singly over places deserted till the morning, have so intent an air of watchfulness and curiosity.
II
On Saturday evening Margaret and Mrs. Fane-Herbert reached the hotel. After dinner, Mrs. Fane-Herbert said to John:
“I hear you changed your mind about leaving the Navy.”
“It was scarcely a question of my changing my mind. It didn’t get as far as that. You see——” He looked aside and saw that Margaret was watching him. “At any rate, I am settled down to it now,” he said.
Hugh broke in with talk of Kamakura.