"I'll run down now and then," Martin took the thin, delicate hands in his. "I'll come—when I feel tired."
"You promise, David?"
"I—swear it."
So Doris took Nancy away. A tearful, woe-begone Nancy who clung to Raymond with the tenacity of a love that faces a desperate situation.
"Beloved," whispered Raymond, "I'm going to get Aunt Emily out of the danger zone and then I'll come to you. If this Joan of yours has arrived—we'll be married, you and I, at once. We don't care for the society fizz. This epidemic makes you think about—taking joy while you can."
"Yes, Ken—if—if Joan will stay with Aunt Dorrie."
"Well, by heaven! She'll have to stay. I'm not going to let them cheat me!"
To this Nancy gave a look that thrilled Raymond as he had never been thrilled before—it was supreme surrender.
And presently in the stricken city gaiety and laughter seemed to die away in the black, swooping shadow.
"When you use up all you know," Clive Cameron said one night to David, "you still keep hunting about for something else, don't you?"