Without any formal greeting, he pulled a letter out of his pocket and said: “Can you get off for a few days at the end of this week? Well, as a matter of fact, you must. I’ve got this letter from our Cathy,” his sister, “and she says and our Mum says I’m to bring you. Saturday to Monday, she says, or longer if we can manage it, but, of course, I can’t. Nobody can afford to leave my job for long together—too many bad characters about. Still, I think I have earned a day or two and Sir Timothy’s quite agreeable, so you’d better arrange about it now and I’ll wait.”

Laura looked at the open door; she could positively feel Miss Lane listening. “I’m s-s-sorry—” she began feebly, but the idea of any one trying to refuse an invitation from his family was unthinkable to Philip. “Go and ask,” he commanded; then, more gently, but still too, too audibly: “Go and ask. You’ve got the right. Everybody takes their girl for their people to see; and you are my girl, aren’t you, Laura?”

The papers on the kitchen table rustled, then again dead silence, but Laura was no longer thinking of the danger of being overheard so much as wondering what she should say.

“You are my girl, aren’t you, Laura?” asked Philip once more, and for the first time since she had known him, Laura detected a faint note of uneasiness in his voice. She herself was trembling with consternation, but when she said, “You’ve never asked me,” her voice sounded flippant, perhaps coquettish, for Philip took one of her trembling hands and smiled down upon her as he said magnanimously: “Well, I thought you understood. But don’t be frightened. You will be my girl. Won’t you, Laura?” That was inadequate enough as a declaration of love, but Laura’s answer was even more inadequate: “No—no thank you, Philip,” she said, and the most unromantic love scene on record was over, for, without another word, he turned, went out of the door and out of her life. She never saw him again to speak to. On one occasion, months afterwards, she had a momentary view of his distant figure, gun on shoulder, stalking across one of the open spaces of the park, but, if he ever came her way again, he must have chosen a time of day when she was not likely to be there.