"Depends."

"Rowley," she hesitated, "did you mind - I mean - Johnnie -"

His cold level gaze threw her back on herself.

"Let's leave Johnnie out of it! The war's over - and I've been lucky."

"Lucky, you mean -" she paused doubtfully - "not to have had to - to go?"

"Wonderful luck, don't you think so?"

She didn't know quite how to take that.

His voice was smooth with hard edges.

He added with a smile, "But, of course, you service girls will find it hard to settle down at home."

She said irritably, "Oh, don't be stupid, Rowley."

(But why be irritable? Why - unless because his words touched a raw nerve of truth somewhere.)

"Oh well," said Rowley. "I suppose we might as well consider getting married. Unless you've changed your mind?"

"Of course I haven't changed my mind. Why should I?"

He said vaguely:

"One never knows."

"You mean you think I'm -" Lynn paused - "different?"

"Not particularly."

"Perhaps you've changed your mind?"

"Oh, no, I've not changed. Very little changes down on the farm, you know."

"All right, then," said Lynn - conscious, somehow, of anti-climax, "let's get married. Whenever you like?"

"June or thereabouts?"

"Yes."

They were silent. It was settled. In spite of herself, Lynn felt terribly depressed.

Yet Rowley was Rowley - just as he always had been. Affectionate, unemotional, painstakingly given to understatement.

They loved each other. They had always loved each other. They had never talked about their love very much - so why should they begin now?

They would get married in June and live at Long Willows (a nice name, she had always thought) and she would never go away again. Go away, that is to say, in the sense that the words now held for her. The excitement of gang planks being pulled up, the racing of a ship's screw, the thrill as an aeroplane became airborne and soared up and over the earth beneath. Watching a strange coastline take form and shape. The smell of hot dust, and paraffin, and garlic - the clatter and gabble of foreign tongues. Strange flowers, red poinsettias rising proudly from a dusty garden... Packing, unpacking - where next?

All that was over. The war was over.

Lynn Marchmont had come home. Home is the sailor, home from the sea... But I'm not the same Lynn who went away, she thought.

She looked up and saw Rowley watching her...

Chapter 4

Aunt Kathie's parties were always much the same. They had a rather breathless amateurish quality about them characteristic of the hostess. Dr Cloade had an air of holding irritability in check with difficulty. He was invariably courteous to his guests - but they were conscious of his courtesy being an effort.

In appearance Lionel Cloade was not unlike his brother Jeremy. He was spare and grey-haired - but he had not the lawyer's imperturbability. His manner was brusque and impatient - and his nervous irritability had affronted many of his patients and blinded them to his actual skill and kindliness. His real interests lay in research and his hobby was the use of medicinal herbs throughout history. He had a precise intellect and found it hard to be patient with his wife's vagaries.