The bus stopped.

‘Tartar Lane,’ said the conductor confidentially to Francis, jerking his thumb.

Toby was standing up, too; it was just as well, for Francis had made up his mind to stay in the bus with her until she got out.

He got out, and she followed him, and the bus rolled off. Everyone in it was looking with interest at Toby and Francis; the conductor even gave Francis a powerful wink, which distorted all one side of his face and expressed almost everything; at least, everything of importance.

The street was dusty, mean, quiet, with a little pub called The Guardsman at the corner of Tartar Lane, small houses whose doors stood open, and one or two noisy playing children. For a second, which gave Francis his chance, Toby hesitated over which way to turn, and he was on her like a hawk. He felt a cad, he felt terrified, but he did not care.

‘May I walk with you, please, to your grandmother’s house?’ he said, standing over her with his hat in his hand. ‘I’m sure you can take care of yourself, but it would give me such great pleasure if you would let me.’

‘Well I never,’ observed Toby thoughtfully, after a not indignant survey of his face and person which lasted for quite four awful seconds. She added, as though appealing to those hidden powers of impartial justice which are presumed to rule the universe, ‘Can you beat it?’

Francis stood still, smiling steadily. He had never felt such a fool, so helpless. His jaws ached with the effort of trying to smile naturally.

‘May I?’ he said at last. And instinct made him abandon his polite, rather affected manner and say with all the earnestness which he felt at that moment and of which he was capable: ‘Please don’t be angry. I don’t mean to be a nuisance. Please just let me walk with you. You’re so pretty; you’re simply lovely. You’re the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen, I mean,’ he ended rather wildly.

Toby neither blushed nor looked self-conscious; she seemed to take her prettiness for granted, as a bird takes its song. She continued to stare at him soberly, but a faint expression of pleasure had come into her eyes. No young woman could hear unmoved the sentence Francis had just uttered.

‘It’s only a short way,’ she said severely at last, ‘and they’ll all be lookin’ out of the window, I expect. What’ll they say, I should like to know?’

‘I’ll go just before we get to the house. Honour bright I will. Truly. If you’ll just let me come. Here … may I carry the parcel?’

‘Be careful you don’t drop it; it’s bath salts,’ she said amiably, giving it him; and lightly, as though their mutual youth had put out a finger and steered them into place, they fell into step together.

Anyone who has dreamed with intensity of walking beside a beloved person, and lived through their dream in actuality, will know how Francis felt. Here am I, here is she. I can look down and see the texture of her gloves and look up and see how her eyes change when she laughs at me. This is more real than anything that has ever happened to me, and yet it is quite unreal. Already, while I live it, I am thinking how I shall have it to remember after it is ended.