.

At last they heard a clock striking eleven, and Sally gave a jump.

"Mercy! Eleven o'clock. Must go home. Good job mother's not there. Else
she'd be asking questions." She laughed as she spoke. "She'd want to
know something. I shouldn't half have a time. 'Eleven o'clock: where you
been?' I shouldn't mind. I'd take no notice. I don't take any notice of
her, because ... you know ... it encourages her if you take any notice.
Oo, the way she keeps on. You wouldn't believe. Drive me to drink, it
would, if I had it all the time. But she's not there...." Sally hugged
Toby. "Isn't it lovely! Nobody to grumble. Nobody to mind what time I
get in.... Well, you know what I mean. I must go in now." But when it
came to the moment of parting she clung to him. "I don't want to go. I
don't want to go," she cried. "It's been so nice, and I've been so
happy." To her horror she felt that she had begun to cry. With an effort
she pulled herself free. "Well, I suppose I _must_. And you'll think of
me, won't you? Just downstairs. And I'll think of you, and wish you were
there.... Oh, fancy me saying that! Toby...." She was passionately
serious. "Say you love me!"

"Love you!" said Toby.

She turned and waved to him when she was a few steps away, flew back to
his arms, and stayed there for a few minutes. Then, this time with more
resolution, she ran towards home, letting herself in with a sense of
brazen guilt at her lateness, and treading softly up the stairs. When
she was in the room, she shuddered a little, at the cold, and in her
excitement. Then she lighted the lamp and looked at herself in the
mirror--at her bright, betraying eyes, at her mouth, which was also
betraying, and at her hair and cheeks and brows and hands. She was
laughing, but not aloud. Her laughter was the mirth of happy excitement.
And, still so happy, she began to undress; and then thought she would
make herself a cup of tea. So she finished undressing while the kettle
boiled, and was sitting up in bed drinking her tea when she heard Toby
go upstairs. His movements made her start, and the tea dribbed over the
side of the cup. Into her head suddenly came a memory of her own words:
"And I'll think of you, and wish you were there."

"And so I do," she suddenly whispered. "So I do. Oh, I'm wicked. I'm
wicked!" She was trembling, and forgetting everything, her eyes fixed
upon the wall vaguely grey before her, outside the pale ray of the lamp.
Mechanically, she sipped a