they swung down the road to the
station.

Before the end of the day Brodrick heard that his offer was accepted.

XXVIII

It was Tanqueray who took Laura home that night. Prothero parted from
her at the station and walked southwards with Nina Lempriere.

"Why didn't you go with her?" she said.

"I couldn't have let you walk home by yourself."

"As if I wasn't always by myself."

Her voice defied, almost repelled him; but her face turned to him with
its involuntary surrender.

He edged himself in beside her with a sudden protective movement, so
that his shoulders shielded her from the contact of the passers by. But
the pace he set was terrific.

"You've no idea, Owen, how odd you look careering through the streets."

"Not odder than you, do I? _You_ ought to be swinging up a
mountain-side, or sitting under an oak-tree. That's how I used to see
you."

"Do you remember?"

"I remember the first time I ever saw you, fifteen years ago. I'd gone
up the mountain through the wood, looking for wild cats. I was beating
my way up through the undergrowth when I came on you. You were above me,
hanging by your arms from an oak-tree, swinging yourself from the upper
ledge down on to the track. Your hair--you had lots of hair, all
tawny--some of it was caught up by the branches, some of it hung over
your eyes. They gleamed through it, all round and startled, and there
were green lights in them. You dropped at my feet and dashed down the
mountain. I had found my wild cat."

"I remember. You frightened me. Your eyes were so queer."

"Not queerer than yours, Nina. Yours had all the enchantment and all the
terror of the mountains in them."

"And yours--yours had the terror and the enchantment of a spirit, a
human spirit lost in a dream. A beautiful and dreadful dream. I'd
forgotten; and now I remember. You look like that now."

"That's your fault, Nina. You make me remember my old dreams."

"Owen," she said, "don't you want to get away? Don't these walls press
on you and hurt you?"

They were passing down a side-street, between rows of bare houses,
houses with iron shutters and doors closed on the dingy secrets, the
mean mysteries of trade; houses of high and solitary lights where some
naked window-square hung golden in a wall greyer than the night.

"Not they," he said. "I've lost that sense. Look there--you and I could
go slap through all that, and it wouldn't even close over us; it would
simply disappear."