Three days later, Hugo himself came. I was coming back from my afternoon walk with the children, pushing the heavy perambulator up the hill, thinking, wondering if he would come to-day. Suddenly I saw him at the end of the road, coming to meet me; a long way off still, but unmistakably Hugo.
I had not seen him in khaki before, and the silhouette was strange, and although I had expected it, it was a shock; but I knew his walk, and I knew the poise of his head. I stopped the perambulator and stood still.
My heart leaped up and throbbed. I had a wild impulse to turn round and run away. I had been counting the hours until this moment, but now that it had come, I was afraid. I dreaded this meeting with Hugo in a way that surprised myself. I felt it to be charged with emotion, painful, stirring emotion, as of all the past revoked; of lost youth, and lost joy, and that terrifying sense of regret for the passage of time and of life. As I hesitated, he saw me. He took off his cap and waved it and I had no choice, I waved back and went on to meet him.
We seemed a long time reaching each other. Then we shook hands, and stood still. I looked into Hugo’s face, and he looked into mine; it seemed at first, as though we had nothing to say.
Hugo’s face frightened me; he was smiling now, the faint half hesitating smile I knew so well, but there was something new in the very smile, in his mouth, above all in his eyes, a desperate, haunted expression, that I had not seen before.
I said:
‘I am glad to see you, Hugo, it is good of you to come up here.’
He said:
‘Why, of course I came.’
He turned to the children, and looked at them with an amused, half puzzled expression, and then back to me.