"Why don't you come too?" asked Sonia.
He hesitated. "I must be getting back to school," he said.
"Not yet," I urged. "Saturday afternoon? I came down here to invite you to take me in for the week-end. Come on to Crowley Court, and we'll walk back together."
He was without excuse and forced to accept.
"Well, why not?" he asked after a moment's deliberation and picked up his ash-plant from the roadside. "Not the first time we've met at this milestone, George?"
The wind was blowing from the south, salt and wet.
"You can still smell the sea from here," I said, as we set out.
"I can still see them, two a minute," he cried. "The grimy Cardiff colliers, and the P. & O.'s swaggering down Channel as if they owned the seas. And out of the grey into the blue of the Bay. And the Rock towering over you one morning. And then the roar of the quayside in Marseilles.... And those parching nights and days in the Canal ... Bombay, Colombo, Singapur, Hong-Kong, Shanghai.... The P. & O. sailings are like an ode of Keats. Java Sea, China Sea.... Salt and sunshine and great swampy rivers losing themselves in a midnight jungle.... The rattle of the derricks, and all the cursing, sweating stevedores in their rolling lighters.... The Pacific Coast and the sweepings of God's universe. 'The smell of goats and incense, and the mule-bells tinkling through.' Put me near tar and salt or the throb of an engine."
He stood with his head thrown back and the wind playing through his hair, once more five thousand miles from Melton. Sonia looked at him and turned away with lowered eyes. I slipped my arm through his, and we walked on, idly discussing the latest news of the war.
Crowley Court had been changed out of recognition. The bigger rooms were turned into wards, nurses in uniform were hurrying up and down stairs, and there were groups of wounded soldiers in their blue overalls sitting or limping about the garden. Twenty-five new patients were expected that night from Southampton, and the resources of the house were being strained to breaking point. Lady Dainton with a mourning brassard over her grey dress gave us tea amid alarums and excursions in the old smoking-room.