ng
that either he had dreamt of this moment or that it had all happened
aeons of ages ago, and that if it was a dream then Mary was in a dream
too, that he had always wanted her, been conscious of her, only then
she was an immense way off; vaguely beautiful and desirable, but set in
a luminous haze of impossibilities, remote, apart as a star.

Now she was friendly and approachable, only a few yards away, looking
across at him with frank kind eyes and the firelight shining on her
bright hair.

The time seemed all too short till Mrs Ffolliot, dressed for driving,
in a long fur coat, came back to tell them that the doctor was at a
case five miles off, at a house where there was no telephone, and that
she had arranged to take Buz into the Marlehouse Infirmary to have the
arm set there, and, if necessary, he must stay there till he could be
moved. . . .

"Could they drive Mr Gallup back?"

So there was nothing for it but to accompany the General and Mrs
Ffolliot.

Mr Ffolliot did not appear at all.

General Grantly went outside with the chauffeur, and Eloquent again
experienced the queer dream-like sense of doing again something he had
done already as he followed Mrs Ffolliot into the motor. He had never
lost his awestruck admiration for her, and it never occurred to him to
sit down at her side. He was about to put down one of the little seats
and sit on that, when she said, "Oh, please, sit here, Mr Gallup," and
he sank into the seat beside her, confused and tremulous. Mary and Mrs
Grantly had come into the porch with them, and stood there now calling
out all sorts of messages and questions. The inner door stood open,
and the hall shone bright behind them.

The motor purred and slid swiftly down the drive.

Mrs Ffolliot switched off the light behind her head, and Eloquent
became conscious of a soft pervading scent of violets. The twenty
years that lay between her first visit to his father's shop and this
wonderful new nearness seemed to him but as one short link in a chain
of inevitable circumstances. Like a picture thrown on a screen he saw
the little boy standing at her knee, the giggling shop assistants, and
his father flushed and triumphant. And he knew that through all the
years he had always been sure that such a moment as this would come,
when he would sit beside her as an equal and a friend. . . . And here
he was, sitting with her in her father's motor, sharing the same fur
rug. What was she sayi