n eyes and
the faint, half-wondering arch above them; and quite definitely he liked
the way she parted her brown hair in the middle and smoothed it till it
lay in two long, low waves (just discernible under the brim of her hat)
upon her forehead. He did not know that long afterward he was never to
see Winny Dymond's eyes and parted hair without some vision of strength
and profound placidity and cleanness.

All he said was he supposed there was no law against his occupying the
same pavement; and then he could have sworn that Winny's face sent a
little ghost of a smile flitting past him through the night.

"Well, anyhow," she said, "you needn't talk to me unless you like."

And at that he threw his head back and laughed aloud. And quite suddenly
the moon came out and stared at them; came bang up on their left above
the River (they were on the bridge now) out of a great cloud, a blazing
and enormous moon. It tickled him. He called her attention to it, and
said he didn't remember that he'd ever seen such a proper whopper of a
moon and with such a shine on him. They hadn't half polished him, he
said. Any one would think that things had all busted, got turned bottom
side upward, and it was the bally old sun that was up there, grinnin' at
them, through the hole he'd made.

"The idea!" said Winny; but she laughed at it, a little shrill and
irresistible titter of delight always, as he was to learn, her homage to
"ideas." He had them sometimes; they came on him all of a sudden, like
that, and he couldn't help it; he couldn't stop them; he got them all
the worse, all the more ungovernably, when Booty lunged at him, as he
did, with his "Dry up, you silly blighter, you!" But that anybody should
take pleasure in his ideas, that _was_ an idea, if you like, to
Ransome.

They got on after that like a house on fire.

* * * * *

But only for that night. For many nights that followed Winny proved more
fugitive, more uncatchable than ever. As often as not, when they arrived
in Oxford Street, she would be gone, fled half an hour before them,
accompanying herself all the way to Wandsworth. Once he pursued her down
Oxford Street, coming up with her as she boarded a bus in full flight;
and they sat in it in gravity and silence, as strangers to each other.
But nearly always she was too quick for him; she got away. And never (he
thanked Heaven for that, long afterward), never for a moment did he
misunderstan