"No," she said. "I knew that you would come."
And they stayed there. (Some instinct had impelled him to call at the shop, and leave his bicycle with Mercier. A bicycle was an encumbrance, a thing inappropriate to the adventure.) They stayed while the couples, the young devotees of passion, stood locked in each other's arms, or moved away, slowly, like creatures in an enchantment, linked together, and passed into the dusk. And in the end his hand sought and found hers, secretly, behind the shelter of her gown, and they too passed, hand in hand and slowly, like creatures in an enchantment; they were drawn into the dusk, beyond the barrier at the Causeway, to the footpath by the river.
When they returned to the elm tree it was all dark and secret there. They stood as those others had stood, creatures of the enchantment, locked, with hands on shoulders and faces looking close and seeing each other's eyes large and strange in the darkness.
Over Wandsworth Plain came the sound of the Parish Church clock striking ten.
When they reached St. Ann's Terrace the little brown house where Violet lodged was shut up, asleep behind drawn blinds.
Violet could let herself in. She had a key. At least, she thought she had. She could have been almost sure she had brought it. But no, it was not in her purse, nor yet in her pocket. She turned the pocket inside out and shook it, and there was no key. Oh, dear, she was afraid she had lost it, or else—perhaps—she hadn't brought it after all. She was that careless. She thought she must have left it in her room on the dressing-table.
They knocked three times, and nobody answered. Nobody was there. They had all gone out early in the evening, and evidently they had not come back. Sometimes, Violet said, they weren't back till eleven or past it.
Well, she didn't want to stand out there much longer. She wondered how she was ever going to get in.
They looked at each other and laughed at their helplessness. There is always something funny about being locked out. Ranny said, "What a lark!"
Then he thought of the window.