And there was a rushing and a turbulence in his ears, pierced sharply by Aunt Moira’s distant voice: “They met like birds, in the open....”
But that was not the only noise in that still moment, there was another, a great clattering as of tin against glass and glass against wood....
“Minuet de cœur!” she whispered.
But it came, they saw at last, from a milk-boy pushing his green hand-cart smartly up the slope of Hertford Street.
Ivor suddenly passed his hand over his eyes, he pressed his eyes, and the eyes of Pamela Star were queerly wet as they stared unseeing at the approaching milk-boy.
“If I don’t go this moment,” said Ivor fiercely, “I’ll never go!” And he strode away from her, down the slope.
“You’ll come back?” she cried softly, in the sudden fear of a great gladness.
“In a few hours,” he cried back over his shoulder, and went his way, determinedly. She watched the tall, striding figure, hat swinging from one hand, until it disappeared round the corner of the blind end of Hertford Street.
The clatter of the milk-cart had fallen to a gentle murmur, and Pamela Star found the milk-boy staring curiously at her.
“I s’pose this’ll be for you, lady,” said the boy politely, offering her one of those bottles of milk that are stopped with a cardboard disc. “As I leaves one ’ere, at No. 78, every morning.”