On his time off he wandered all over London, visiting museums and art galleries, but his secret contempt for the who, what, and when of military life made him fumble into all kinds of trouble about dress and saluting. He got to know a few girls, one of whom, chance-met in the next seat at a concert, became a friend until she had waited for him once outside the army office and been shocked by overheard badinage. Neither of them had had enough importance to the other to be able to think it merely funny. He had made one man friend also, an English policeman who sometimes idled into the office at nights for a chat over the stove. The policeman had a sister in Alberta and a romantic feeling about America as a whole. He took Paul several times to supper at his little house near the Angel, Islington. Paul liked him from the moment he had said: “If I ‘ad your job, mate, I’d shoot meself. ‘Avin’ to put up with all them jokes from them officers and no chawnce to answer back—it’s worse’n bein’ a bloody bar-tender. Specially when they all think you’ve got it so cushy.” It was true; he knew how he was envied by some of the men on their way to the Front, and how little they guessed there could be any way in which he envied them. Yet he did, and then he didn’t, so many times; there had been conflict, even in those days, between physical distaste (fear, too, but no more than anyone else had) and a mental longing to put himself to the test, to find out if he could face what other men faced.

And now, four years later, he entered Euston Station, happily remembering how miserable he had been.

* * * * *

As soon as he saw her he knew that their relationship was on a different level, established at the house in Terenure that night, but since fortified by time, absence, and—who could say?—perhaps by a telepathy of awareness between them. She rushed up to him in the station hall and laughed her first words above the din of porters and luggage trucks. “Oh, Paul—Paul—I never dreamed I’d see you so soon—I didn’t know how to answer your letters at first—they sounded so cold, as if you didn’t want to see me again, but then when you said you did— “

“Carey, I did—I do—I’ve missed you—in such an extraordinary way. Carey, you look unbelievable… Had dinner? No? Nor have I. This aunt of yours in Putney can wait… Where’s your luggage? Just the one bag? We’ll take it along, then.”

They drove to a small French restaurant in Lisle Street that he knew of —quiet, informal, expensive. He had economized by staying at the Ellesmere, but now he would be extravagant—he would ask Merryweather for more work, would write a hundred articles, would interview Lenin, Gandhi, Bernard Shaw, Suzanne Lenglen—the whole who’s who of the world. That was his mood as he consulted the menu. Normally he was no gourmet, and his appetite was voracious rather than fastidious. But now he suddenly hankered after delicacies—terrapin, caviare, frogs’ legs—careless of how they mixed or what they cost; and it was she, in tune with his emotion yet thinking of his pocket-book, who talked him out of the wilder whims. Eventually he compromised on smoked salmon, poulet en casserole, and a bottle of Heidsieck—forgetting that Rowden had called champagne a wine for cocottes. And meanwhile they talked almost antiphonally, as if their respective concerns matched each other—his failure in Rome, her own bereavement in Dublin; the Magic Flute in Paris, a new play at the Abbey in which (sure enough) she had been offered the fourteen-year-old part. But she had had to turn it down in order to come to London. She didn’t care— any more than he cared about Merryweather’s disappointment. It was one of the few times in his life he had found anyone who could talk as much as he did without seeming to interrupt or to wait anxiously for chances to butt in; a musical simile again occurred to him—that they were somehow improvising on a keyboard of speech while their underlying thoughts made deeper harmony in what was left unsaid.

Over the coffee he remembered that aunt of hers. “Carey, hadn’t you better telephone you’ll be late?”

“She doesn’t know I’m coming at all till I do telephone.”

“She doesn’t? Oh, fine. Then we don’t have to worry, except that if the old lady goes to bed early—”

“She’s not old. She’s not much older than I am.”

“No?”

“My mother was the eldest of fifteen and Sylvia’s the youngest. She’s married to a landscape gardener. They have three children and I don’t know how many dogs—they breed them—wire-haired terriers all over the place. It’s good for children to live in an atmosphere like that. They’ve won any amount of prizes. The dogs, I mean.” She made a grimace. “All this must be so enthralling to you.