“Hush!”
“Or back in the island serving out sewing at a mothers' meeting! Give it up! Indeed I won't!”
“You shall and you must!”
“Who'll make me?”
“I will!”
Then she laughed out wildly, but stopped on the instant and looked up at him with glistening eyes. An intense blush came over her face, and her looks grew bright as his grew fierce. A moment afterward the waiting maid, with an inquisitive expression, was clearing the table and keeping a smile in reserve for “the lovers' quarrel!”
Some of the Guardsmen were in the train going back, and at the next station they changed to the carriage in which Glory and John were sitting. Apparently they had dined before leaving their club at Maidenhead, and they talked at Glory with covert smiles. “Going to the Colosseum tonight?” said one. “If there's time,” said another. “Oh, time enough. The attraction doesn't begin till ten, don't you know, and nobody goes before.” “Tell me she's rippin'.” “Good—deuced good.”
Glory was sitting with her back to the engine drumming lightly on the window and looking out at the setting sun. At first she felt a certain shame at the obvious references, but, piqued at John's silence, she began to take pride in them, and shot glances at him from under half-closed eyelids. John was sitting opposite with his arms folded. At the talk of the men he felt his hands contract and his lips grow cold with the feeling that Glory belonged to everybody now and was common property. Once or twice he looked at them and became conscious of an impression, which had floated about him since he left the Brotherhood, that nearly every face he saw bore the hideous stamp of self-indulgence and sensuality.
But the noises of the train helped him not to hear, and he looked out for London. It lay before them under a canopy of smoke, and now and then a shaft from the setting sun lit up a glass roof and it glittered like a sinister eye. Then there came from afar, over the creaking and groaning of the wheels and the whistle of the engine, the deep, multitudinous murmur of that distant sea. The mighty tide was rising and coming up to meet them. Presently they were dashing into the midst of it, and everything was drowned in the splash and roar.
The Guardsmen, being on the platform side, alighted first, and on going off they bowed to Glory with rather more than easy manners. A dash of the devil prompted her to respond demonstratively, but John had risen and was taking off his hat to the men, and they were going away discomfited. Glory was proud of him—he was a man and a gentleman.