“My country. When?”
“To-morrow.”
“You’ll write me sometimes? I shall be lonely, you know, at first.”
“Why, certainly.”
“Then, if you’re going to write to me, I must write to you. You’ll have to let me have your addresses so that I can send my letters on ahead.”
I wrote her out the list of towns and dates, telling her to address me poste restante.
I accompanied her across the quad to the lodge. I had had no idea it was so late. Big Tom had ceased ringing for an hour. It was past ten. The porter, when I called him out to unlock the gate, eyed us disapprovingly.
“I’ll see you home,” I told her.
She hesitated, urged that she could get home quite safely by herself, it was such a short way to go—but at last she surrendered.
Through the mysterious, moon-washed streets we walked; but not near together as formerly. We had nothing to say to one another. Or was it that we had too much, and they were things that we were ashamed to utter? The echo of our footfall followed behind us like a presence. At the turnings we lost it. Then it seemed to hurry till it had made up the distance; again it followed. The cobble-stones beneath us made our steps uneven. Sometimes we just brushed shoulders, and started apart with a guilty sense of contact. Sometimes we passed a window that was lighted by a student’s lamp. We could see him through the curtains poring over outspread books, holding his head between his hands. As we turned to look in on him, our faces were illumined. Her face was troubled; coming out of the night suddenly it looked blanched and distressful.