I saw someone very small, very slight, very delicate-faced and yet very resolute, with amethyst-like eyes that looked straight into my eyes, asking me mute questions concerning the soul of the boy who had been mine only till now, but was not likely to be mine only for ever.
She was accompanied by an aunt, and the little tea-party went off very successfully, with Little Yeogh Wough glowing with pride and happiness, and his sister, who had come with me, taking things all in, as she always did. Not one of us breathed a word as to what we had really come there for—namely, to examine each other and see how we liked each other; but the verdict was an all-round satisfactory one, and in the end we all got into a taxicab together and Miss Vera Brennan sat on my knee.
"How tiny you are!" I said playfully.
"Yes. I was saying to Roland once how sorry I am that I'm so small, and he said he liked small women."
She was going to buy a hat, and I set her and her aunt down at the hat shop. Little Yeogh Wough went with them to help her in making her choice—or, rather, to show her how well he could choose a hat for her even this first time.
I did not watch him go into the shop, because at that moment there came along a marching phalanx of new recruits, most of whom had not yet got their uniforms; men of London, who had given themselves up to strive and suffer for their country and who came along without panoply or music, and with no need of either because of the music that was in their hearts, and that made their eyes glow and their steps ring firm and true.
If I had been a man I should have bared my head to them as they passed. I honoured them, I reverenced them, I loved them, with an honour and a reverence and a love that half choked me.
That evening, when Little Yeogh Wough came back to me at the hotel, he asked me in a quite careless tone how I liked Miss Brennan.
"Oh, I like her very much!" I answered him. "She is good-looking and sincere—and good looks and sincerity go a very long way. I hope you let her know that it was I who had trained you to be a good judge of hats and of most other articles of the feminine wardrobe?"