She looked at it.
“Yes. It’s all right.”
Usually now when he met her in the evening he kissed her, because she expected it. She had kissed him first when he had given her a present at Christmas, and thereafter it became their practice, comradely. To-night he did not kiss her. He was stirred at the sight of her; her friendliness, the bright greeting of her eyes thrust him back into himself and inwardly alarmed him. And she looked up at him and laughed mischievously, and swung her body from the hips up, and then moved slowly away from him, pouting her lips.
“Would you like anywhere better than Kew?” he asked.
“Wimbledon, where we saw the picture-actors. D’you remember?” They boarded a bus and were swiftly borne out over the river, up through the holiday town that had reminded him of Buxton, and out to the wide common. There they wandered. A thin moon came up. They passed whispering lovers, and men and women for whom that word was too great.
Here again was spring, the first spring evening.
Ann chattered, but René spoke never a word. Once she said:
“Dull to-night, aren’t you? Are you tired?”
Her questions met with so hard a silence that she too ceased to talk.
She thought he must be offended with her, and as they returned she slipped her hand on his knee. He gripped her forearm, held it for a moment, then put her away from him.