"It belongs to a friend at the War Office." She nodded her permission to the trim girl-soldier at the wheel to start. "He lent it to me when he heard that I was to meet you this morning. Taxis are so scarce, and I didn't know how well you could walk, so——" She turned from the subject abruptly. "You're so changed. I scarcely recognized you at first. I was expecting that you'd still be in uniform."
"I was demobbed yesterday. So you find me changed! For better or for worse? Confess, Terry."
She was aware that beneath his assumption of gayety he was hiding something—something that pained. He had been hurt too much already. With impulsive sympathy she laid her hand on his arm. "It isn't a case of better or worse. Between people like ourselves appearances don't matter. I think to me you were handsomest of all as a Tommy. How proud I was of you, Tabs, when you first joined up! Do you remember how I used to strut along beside you—— And that last night, when you went for the first time to the Front?"
He remembered, and waited with boyish expectancy. She had stopped suddenly and glanced away from him. For the second time his intensity had
frightened her. He said nothing—did nothing to help her. She mustered her courage to turn back with a smile. "It's long ago, isn't it. Tabs? I've grown such a big girl now."
He brushed aside her attempt to divert him. "But you find a difference in me?"
"A difference! You mean the difference between a man in uniform and in mufti? Why, yes. A uniform made you look younger. It did that for most men."
"But more for me than for most." He was pitiless towards himself now that he had forced her to answer. "I've aged more than the five years since you slipped your arm into mine as we marched through the darkness to the troop-train. You never shed a tear, Terry. You kept your promise. Often and often when I was afraid in the trenches I remembered you, a white and gold slip of a girl with dry eyes, waving and waving. And then, somehow, because you'd kept your promise not to cry——"
"Don't," she whispered. "Please don't. It's all ended. Everything's new and beginning afresh."
"Beginning with you," he questioned, "where it left off?"