d was using a very small shaded torch. There was just the faintest
moving shimmer on the wall beyond, though that might come from the
crack of moonlight.

Apparently he was reassured, for his movements became more distinct.
There was a jar as if a table had been pushed back. Once more there was
silence, and I heard only the intake of breath. I have very quick ears,
and to me it sounded as if the man was rattled. The breathing was quick
and anxious.

Suddenly it changed and became the ghost of a whistle--the kind of
sound one makes with the lips and teeth without ever letting the tune
break out clear. We all do it when we are preoccupied with
something--shaving, or writing letters, or reading the newspaper. But I
did not think my man was preoccupied. He was whistling to quiet
fluttering nerves.

Then I caught the air. It was 'Cherry Ripe'.

In a moment, from being hugely at my ease, I became the nervous one. I
had been playing peep-bo with the unseen, and the tables were turned.
My heart beat against my ribs like a hammer. I shuffled my feet, and
again there fell the tense silence.

'Mary,' I said--and the word seemed to explode like a bomb in the
stillness--'Mary! It's me--Dick Hannay.'

There was no answer but a sob and the sound of a timid step.

I took four paces into the darkness and caught in my arms a trembling
girl ...

Often in the last months I had pictured the kind of scene which would
be the culminating point of my life. When our work was over and war had
been forgotten, somewhere--perhaps in a green Cotswold meadow or in a
room of an old manor--I would talk with Mary. By that time we should
know each other well and I would have lost my shyness. I would try to
tell her that I loved her, but whenever I thought of what I should say
my heart sank, for I knew I would make a fool of myself. You can't live
my kind of life for forty years wholly among men and be of any use at
pretty speeches to women. I knew I should stutter and blunder, and I
used despairingly to invent impossible situations where I might make my
love plain to her without words by some piece of melodramatic sacrifice.

But the kind Fates had saved me the trouble. Without a syllable save
Christian names stammered in that eerie darkness we had come to
complete understanding. The fairies had been at work unseen, and the
thoughts of each of us had been moving towards the other, till love had
germinated like a seed in the dark. As I held her