“Jolly murky, isn’t it? I miss that fireworks Johnny pourin’ whiskey over by Waterloo Bridge—and Big Ben. Doesn’t seem like London. All rot anyway.”
“You don’t think there’s danger,” she asked cautiously.
He hesitated a moment before replying. And then, “No,” he said, “not now.”
Silence fell over them again. It was as though a shape sat between, a phantom of her dead hopes and his, something so cold and tangible that she drew away in her own corner and looked out at the meaningless blur of the sleeping city. Her lips were tightly closed. She had given him his chance to speak, but he had not spoken and every foot of road that they traversed seemed to carry them further apart. The end of their journey—! Was it to be the end ... of everything between them?
After a while that seemed interminable she heard his voice again.
“I suppose you think I’m an awful rotter.”
She turned her head and tried to read his face, but he kept it away from her, toward the opposite window. The feeling that she had voiced to Betty Heathcote of wanting to “mother” him came over her in a warm effusion.
“Nothing that you can say to me will make me think you one, Cyril,” she said gently.
“Thanks awf’ly,” he murmured. And after a pause, “I am though, you know.”