y
Manor went over to her and I came up to live in London. I don't know
really that I regret it so very much. This life suits me in a way,
though sometimes it's a bit lonely. That's, at any rate, the gist
of the whole business. We see each other sometimes; but her continual
efforts to get me to don the uncomfortable garments of social
respectability make the meetings as uninviting as when you go to be
fitted at a tailor's. I suppose that's a sort of thing you
like--you're a woman--but I'm hanged if I do. I'd buy all my clothes
ready made if I could be sure that nobody else had worn 'em before.
Anyhow, I won't be fitted for social respectability any more often
than I can help. By Jove! What's that? Do you hear that noise? It's
at the back!"

They strained their ears; lips half parted on which the breath waited,
to listen. The sounds, muffled, were broken at moments by a subdued
chorus of men's voices.

Traill crossed the room to the door that opened into his bedroom;
unlatched it, held it wide. Sally watched his face with
half-expectant eyes.

"There's a yard at the back," he said; "my bedroom looks on to it.
Excuse me a second." He disappeared. She heard him throw up the window,
when the sounds increased in volume. Now she could distinguish
individual voices--voices taut, strained to a pitch of excitement.
Then Traill's voice, with a strange, stirring voice of vitality keyed
in it.

"Sally--here!"

It was not thinkingly said. That there had been no thought, no
premeditation, was the fact that stirred her most. In his mind she
had been Sally, and in a moment of tensity he had let it shape on
his lips. She felt the blood racing through her like a mill-dam loosed.
She thought when first she rose to her feet--and it was as though
some strong hand had lifted her--that her limbs would refuse
obedience. A moment of emotion, that was passivity itself, obsessed
her. Then she hurried through into the other room, across to the open
window where he stood expectant. There was no thought that it was
his bedroom in which they stood--no consideration in her mind of the
observance of any narrow laws of propriety. He had asked her. She
came.

"This is the cleanest bit of luck," he said, with scarce controlled
excitement.

"What is it?" She pressed nearer to the window.

He explained. "This yard at the back belongs to some railway company
and two of their men are going to settle a difference of
opinion--that's putting it mild