We paused, and waited again.
Dumbly, instinctively, I raised my arms to Hugo’s neck. He grasped me, and we kissed. It flashed through my mind, as something very strange, that we had not kissed each other since that time we did not kiss on the evening of Guy’s birthday, beside the Jasmine Gate. We had before that always, without thinking about it.
‘My dear, dear Helen . . .’ Hugo murmured; and I said nothing at all. My hands clasped each other, hard, behind his neck; I felt just then that I could never let him go . . . and then it seemed suddenly that something snapped . . .
‘Good night, Hugo,’ I said, and my arms dropped to my sides.
‘My dear, good night.’
I waited a moment longer with my hand on the handle of the door; it seemed to us both, I think, that there was something more we must say; but we could not; no words came.
I opened my bedroom door, and pulled it to behind me. I dropped into a chair by the window, and sat there, quite still, for a time. Then I roused myself, took off my hat and shoes, and lay down on the bed.
I lay still and listened to the stir of the traffic outside. The rumble of trains, the perpetual hoots of taxi cabs turning round the corner, in and out of the station. From the open window, came the acrid smell of train smoke, drifting in with the night fog. I felt cold, and shivered; then I got up and threw my coat over the quilt of the bed.
It seemed to me that I must have lain awake all night, but at last I fell asleep.
A maid woke me at a quarter to six, with a can of hot water. I woke with a start of terror, and plunged myself awake properly in the hot water.