ry next sentence would have suggested
that Elsie and I should walk together.

She wouldn't "make the attempt...." Her words trailed through my mind,
conjuring up some adventure, some act of bravery and daring.

The road was the high road, the channel of tarmac and pavements that she
probably walked along every day; and now it was the selfsame high road,
the same flagstones, hedges, railings, but with the cloak of night upon
them.

It wasn't man she feared; even in the dark I knew she wasn't that kind.
She would be awfully capable--with man. No, it was the darkness, the
spooky jungle of darkness: she feared the trees would move....

"I wouldn't make the attempt, not for anything"; and the other woman had
quite agreed with her.

I knew where I was by the smells and the sounds on the road--the smell
of the lines of picketed horses behind the railings, the sharp and
sudden stamp of the sick ones in the wooden stables, and, later on, the
glitter of water in the horse-troughs.

I thought: "I am not afraid.... Is it because I am more educated, or
have less imagination?"

"Halt! Who goes there?"

"Friend," I said, thrilling tremendously.

He approached me and said something which I couldn't make anything of.
Presently I disentangled, "You should never dread the baynit, miss."

"But I'm not dreading," I said, annoyed, "I ... I love it."

He said he was cold, and added: "I bin wounded. If you come to that lamp
you can see me stripe."

We went to the lamp. "It's them buses," he complained, "they won't stop
when I halt 'em."

"But why do you want to stop them? They can't poison the horse-troughs."

"It's me duty," he said. "There's one comin'."

A bus, coming the opposite way, bore down upon us with an unwieldy rush
and roar--the last bus, in a hurry to get to bed.

"You'll see," he said pessimistically.

"'Alt! 'Alt, there!" The bus, with three soldiers hanging on the step,
rushed past us, and seemed to slow a little. The sentry ran a few paces
towards it, crying "'Alt!" But it gathered speed and boomed on again,
buzzing away between the gas-lamps. He returned to me sadly.

"I don't believe they can hear," I said, and gave him some chocolates
and went on.

As I passed the hospital gates it seemed there was a faint, a very
faint, sweet smell of chloroform....

I was down at the hospital to-night when the factory blew up over the
river.

The lights went out, and as they sank I reached the kitchen hatchwa