of a
smile, she took a long pin from under the lapel of her coat and, leaning
forward, began to prick out a pattern on the leaf she had laid on the
wooden seat. She was in the midst of doing it--had indeed decorated two
or three--when she found herself turning her head to listen to
something. It was a quick, buoyant marching step--not a nursemaid's, not
a gardener's, and it was coming towards her corner as if with
intention--and she suddenly knew that she was listening as if the
intention concerned herself. This was only because there are
psychological moments, moods, conditions at once physical and mental
when every incident in life assumes the significance of
intention--because unconsciously or consciously one is _waiting_.

Here was a crisp tread somehow conveying a suggestion of familiar happy
eagerness. The tall young soldier who appeared from behind the clump of
shrubs and stood before her with a laughing salute had evidently come
hurriedly. And the hurry and laughter extraordinarily brought back the
Donal who had sprung upon her years ago from dramatic ambush. It was
Donal Muir who had come.

"I saw you from a friend's house across the street," he said. "I
followed you."

He made no apology and it did not even cross her mind that apology was
conventionally necessary. He sat down beside her and his effect--though
it did not express itself physically--was that of one who was breathing
quickly. The clear blueness of his gaze seemed to enfold and cover her.
The wonderfulness of him was the surrounding atmosphere she had felt as
a little child.

"The whole world is rocking to and fro," he said. "It has gone mad. We
are all mad. There is no time to wait for anything."

"I know! I know!" she whispered, because her pretty breast was rising
and falling, and she had scarcely breath left to speak with.

Even as he looked down at her, and she up at him, the colour and
laughter died out of him. Some suddenly returning memory brought a black
cloud into his eyes and made him pale. He caught hold of both her hands
and pressed them quite hard against his bowed face. He did not kiss them
but held them against his cheek.

"It is terrible," he said.

Without being told she knew what he meant.

"You have been hearing new horrible things?" she said. What she guessed
was that they were the kind of things she had shuddered at, feeling her
blood at once hot and cold. He lifted his face but did not release her
hands.

"At my