anding there. It seemed to
make her so prominent. Men stared at her. He should have been there
first. He might have known ... But perhaps Caroline never gave him the
letter. At that thought her heart really did stop. She was terrified at
once as though some one had told her disastrous news. She would not
wait very long; then she would go home ...

She saw him. He stood only a little away from her staring about him,
looking for her. She felt that she had not seen him for years; she
drank in his sturdiness, his boyish face, his air of caring nothing for
authority. She had not seen his dark blue overcoat before. He stood
directly under a lamp, swaying ever so little on his heels, his
favourite, most characteristic, movement. He stood there as though he
were purposely giving her a portrait that she might remember for the
rest of her days. She was too nervous to move and then she wanted that
wonderful moment to last, that moment when she had realised that he had
come to meet her, that he was there, amongst all those crowds, simply
for her, that he was looking for her and wanting her, that he would be
bitterly disappointed did she not come ...

She saw him give a little impatient jerk of the head, the same movement
that she had seen him make in Chapel. That jerk set her in motion
again, and she was suddenly at his side. She touched his arm; he turned
and his eyes lit with pleasure. They smiled at one another and then,
without a word, moved off towards the park. He took her arm and put it
through his. She felt the warm thick stuff of the blue coat, and
beneath that the steady firm beat of his heart. They walked closely
together, his thigh pressed against hers, and once and again her hair
brushed his cheek. She was so shy that, until they were through the
gates of the park, she did not speak. Then she said:

"I was so afraid that Caroline would not give you the note."

"Oh, she gave it me all right." He pressed her arm closer to him. "But
I expect that she read it first."

"Oh, is she like that?"

"Yes, she's like that ..."

There was another pause; they turned down the path to the right towards
the trees that were black lumps of velvet against the purple sky. There
were no stars, and it was liquidly dark as though they ploughed through
water. Maggie felt suffocated with heat and persecuted by a strange
weariness; she was suddenly so tired that it was all that she could do
to walk.

"I'm tired ..." she murmured--"expe