She said ‘Please do,’ and pointedly refrained from calling out ‘Good night’ to Sophie, who was walking some yards ahead with the Hero of the doomed play, a gentleman by whom of late she had been rather engrossed.
Sheila and Kay walked for a while in silence down a broad avenue of trees bordered on one side by dark woods, and on the other by scattered houses. A yellow strip of moon hung, glowing in the blue, above the woods.
She began telling him that she was to be sent away to St. Margaret’s, a school in Selborne; that the term was thirteen weeks long; and that her aunt talked of going to live in Selborne permanently. This meant that she and Kay might never meet again.
Kay surveyed this prospect dismally. They discussed it in elaborately casual tones. And all the while she was thinking how delicious were the stillness and the moonlight and this unspoken love. Even the impending separation was beautiful, tragic, uplifting. When at his suggestion they sat down on a borough council seat facing the woods, she caught her breath and trembled at the exquisite beauty of his shy avoidance of her eyes.
‘Frightfully thick those woods are,’ he said.
But that was said to gain time, she knew. A feeling almost of fear came over her. He was going to try to put into words this wonderful, this unutterable love.... If only it could remain unspoken, and they sit here for ever in silence!
‘I say, Sheila,’ he burst out. ‘I wish you weren’t going!’
‘Do you?’ She stared at the dark gravel path.
‘Dash it all—I’m awfully fond of you.’
She turned to him with flushed cheeks and fluttering heart, trying to speak.