For it happened in the night....
I left him standing by the earth-wall, with the lights still twinkling at sea and the low glare of Fréhel in the sky behind him. Four seconds, eleven seconds, four times a minute——
"Jennie!" I heard his hushed, rapt voice as I turned away.
V
"Le Por-r-rt! Le Por-r-rt!"
Only an old woman with white streamers and a basket descended from the tram, but instinctively I turned my head to look at the flowery bank on which I had sat so few hours before. It was a sparkling morning, with an intense blue sky, high white clouds and singing larks. The fields of flowering sarrasin were white, cream, pink, deep russet; and far away the grey-green boscage receded into misty blue, unbroken by walls or fences, that contradictory communal undulation of a country where individualism is at its most intense, holdings small, and a ditch or a bank you could stride over fencing enough. But I was too anxious to be able to admire. At the best it looked as if I should have to assume complete responsibility for him and so cut my visit to the Airds abruptly short. At the worst—but I put the worst from me.
"Allez! Roulez!"
With the sound of a tank going into action the tram clattered forward to St Lunaire.
Up the steep street, and a swerve past the acres of tennis-courts that had once been grass. The huge six-acre cage was already full of players, and I thought of Jennie Aird. Then past the magasins and the long café, with half-clad young Frenchmen punting a ball and walking on their hands in the strip of meadow opposite. The Casino, the hotels, and then a steep planted avenue that seemed to end in the air. Then a rush and another swerve, and out on to the wide expanse of tussocky links, grey and fawn sandhills, and turf gemmed with a myriad tiny flowers.