“Ask me to describe it!” retorted the young man, in extreme contempt. “It’s the most marvelous sound in the world.”
And truly he seemed wrapped up in a new mystery.
“Where does it come from?” asked Miss James, very practical.
“Apparently,” he answered in contempt, “from over there.” And he pointed to the trees and bushes inside the railings over the road.
“Well, let’s go and see!” she said. “I can carry my machine and go on listening.”
The man seemed relieved to get rid of the burden. He shoved his hands in his pockets again and sloped off across the road. The policeman, a queer look flickering on his fresh young face, put his hand round the girl’s arm carefully and subtly, to help her. She did not lean at all on the support of the big hand, but she was interested, so she did not resent it. Having held herself all her life intensely aloof from physical contact, and never having let any man touch her, she now, with a certain nymphlike voluptuousness, allowed the large hand of the young policeman to support her as they followed the quick, wolflike figure of the other man across the road uphill. And she could feel the presence of the young policeman, through all the thickness of his dark-blue uniform, as something young and alert and bright.
When they came up to the man in the bowler hat, he was standing with his head ducked, his ears pricked, listening beside the iron rail inside which grew big, black holly trees tufted with snow, and old, ribbed, silent English elms.
The policeman and the girl stood waiting. She was peering into the bushes with the sharp eyes of a deaf nymph, deaf to the world’s noises. The man in the bowler hat listened intensely. A lorry rolled downhill, making the earth tremble.
“There!” cried the girl, as the lorry rumbled darkly past. And she glanced round with flashing eyes at her policeman, her fresh, soft face gleaming with startled life. She glanced straight into the puzzled, amused eyes of the young policeman. He was just enjoying himself.
“Don’t you see?” she said, rather imperiously.