“My dear Bertram. Please don’t interrupt. Can’t you find something to read?”
“Sorry!” said Bertram, “but I wanted to have the favour of a few words with Joyce presently.”
“The night’s young,” said Ottery, impatiently. “Don’t spoil the game, sir.”
“Your answer, Joyce?” said Bertram.
She looked at him now, straight in the eyes, with a challenge of will.
“After the game, and when I’m ready. Not before.”
“Right!”
He went out of the room, and out of the house, and for more than an hour wandered about the park.
It was a warm night on the last day of April, with a three-quarter moon, so that the branches of the trees were silvered and the lawns flooded with a milky radiance. The old house with its tall chimneys flung black shadows across the terrace paths, and the broken Venus gleamed white above the flight of steps to the rose gardens. The night air was still fragrant with the scent of flowers and damp grass, and warm earth. In the long avenue down which Bertram paced, a nightingale was singing to its mate, with little trills of passion.
Bertram remembered the last time he had heard a nightingale singing like that. It was in Notre Dame de Lorette, after a battle at Lens. The red flash of gunfire made a regular pulsation of light through the shell-gashed trees and the roar of bombardment shook the very earth. But the little bird in the tree went on singing to its mate. Queer! Even with men, love and the mating business of passion went on and would not surrender its claim though half the world was in ruins and civilisation was menaced by many dangers, and the individual had no sense of security.