THE LOVE OF ROMANCE
SHE opened the window, at which no light shone. All the other windows were darkly shuttered. The night was still: only a faint breath moved among the restless aspen leaves. The ivy round the window whispered hoarsely as the casement, swung back too swiftly, rested against it. She had a large linen sheet in her hands. Without hurry and without delayings she knotted one corner of it to the iron staple of the window. She tied the knot firmly, and further secured it with string. She let the white bulk of the sheet fall between the ivy and the night, then she climbed on to the window-ledge, and crouched there on her knees. There was a heart-sick pause before she grasped the long twist of the sheet as it hung—let her knees slip from the supporting stone and swung suddenly, by her hands. Her elbows and wrists were grazed against the rough edge of the window-ledge—the sheet twisted at her weight, and jarred her shoulder heavily against the house wall. Her arms seemed to be tearing themselves from their sockets. But she clenched her teeth, felt with her feet for the twisted ivy stems on the side of the house, found foothold, and the moment of almost unbearable agony was over. She went down, helped by feet and hands, and by ivy and sheet, almost exactly as she had planned to do. She had not known it would hurt so much—that was all. Her feet felt the soft mould of the border: a stout geranium snapped under her tread. She crept round the house, in the house's shadow—found the gardener's ladder—and so on to the high brick wall. From this she dropped, deftly enough, into the suburban lane: dropped, too, into the arms of a man who was waiting there. She hid her face in his neck, trembling, and said, "Oh, Harry—I wish I hadn't!" Then she began to cry helplessly. The man, receiving her embrace with what seemed in the circumstances a singularly moderated enthusiasm, led her with one arm still lightly about her shoulders down the lane: at the corner he stood still, and said in a low voice—
"Hush—stop crying at once! I've something to say to you."
She tore herself from his arm, and gasped.
"It's not Harry," she said. "Oh, how dare you!" She had been brave till she had dropped into his arms. Then the need for bravery had seemed over. Now her tears were dried swiftly and suddenly by the blaze of anger and courage in her eyes.
"Don't be unreasonable," he said, and even at that moment of disappointment and rage his voice pleased her. "I had to get you away somehow. I couldn't risk an explanation right under your aunt's windows. Harry's sprained his knee—cricket. He couldn't come."
A sharp resentment stirred in her against the lover who could play cricket on the very day of an elopement.
"He told you to come? Oh, how could he betray me!"
"My dear girl, what was he to do? He couldn't leave you to wait out here alone—perhaps for hours."