Her eyes dilated; she caught at his arm and nodded silently.
"You said, 'It must be a dream. If it isn't, I can't bear it!' Was that it?"
She nodded again. She could not speak. Allen felt a strange dryness in his throat. He put his arm round Isobel, and she leant against him trembling.
"Then—then you disappeared. I thought I must have been seeing things, but—but...."
"It was real," she whispered. "I knew it was, somehow. That's why I came here to work—that's why I brought you here. Denis—I'm frightened. What does it all mean?"
"Mean?" repeated Allen. "My darling, you're shaking like a leaf. What can it mean but—this?"
They kissed.... Years later, it seemed, Isobel caught sight of Allen's wrist-watch, and came suddenly back to earth.
"We must simply fly," she said. "Thank Heaven there was nobody on the road to see us. No, Denis, you mustn't. We must get back.... Oh, well, then...."
They kissed once more, blissfully unconscious that a pair of youthful but malicious eyes had been drinking in every detail of the scene, or that when the car had proceeded on its way—hopelessly late for lunch—Bobby Myers scrambled out of the hedge and scurried hot-foot to entrust this precious information to the safe keeping of Mrs. Rudd. By teatime there was not a soul in the entire neighborhood who had not heard the news, with the exception of the isolated and deeply suspected inhabitants of Denmore Manor.