d it 'll never be the same again," she wailed.

But Ranny remained godlike in his calm. There was still one and sixpence
of his sovereign left.

"You can keep your hat on. We're going to take a cab."

If he had said he was going to take an aeroplane she couldn't have been
more amazed. It was only seven minutes' walk to Acacia Avenue. And it
was not a common cab, it was Parker's fly that he was taking.

She surrendered because of the new suit.

"I can count the times I've ridden in a cab," she said. "This is the
third. First time it was going to Father's funeral. Second time it was
poor Mother's funeral. I've never been happy in a cab till now."

"Poor little girl! Next time it'll be coming from our wedding. Will you
be happy then?"

"I'm so happy now, Ranny, that I can't believe it."

"It'll only be six months, or seven at the outside."

"Are you sure?"

"Certain."

The worst of the cab was that it cut short their moments.

It had been standing a whole minute before Johnson's side door. He sent
it away.

For fifteen seconds, measured by hammer strokes of their hearts, they
were alone. On the streaming doorstep, under the dripping eaves, he held
her. He kissed her sweet face all wet with rain.

"Little Winky--little darling Winky." He pushed back her Peggy hat, and
his voice lost itself in her hair.

"They're coming," she whispered.

There was a sound of footsteps and of a bolt drawn back. Somebody behind
the door opened it just wide enough to let Winny through, then shut it
on him.

It was intolerable, unthinkable, that she should disappear like that.
Through a foot of space, in a hair's breadth of time, she had slipped
from him.

CHAPTER XXXI

Nobody had seen them, for at this hour Acacia Avenue was deserted. The
long monotonous pattern of it stretched before him, splendidly blurred,
rich with lamplight and rain, bordered with streaming stars, striped
with watered light and darkness, glowing, from lamp to lamp, with dim
reds and purples that the daylight never sees, and with the strange
gas-lit green of its tree tufts shivering under the rain.

Otherwise the Avenue was depressing in its desolation. The more so
because it was not quite deserted. At the far end of it the lamplight
showed a woman's figure, indistinct and diminished. This figure, visibly
unsheltered, moved obliquely as if it were driven by the slanting rain
and shrank from its whipping.

He could not tell whether it were