"Yes, it's soon forgotten - all of it. Back to safety! Back to tameness!

Back to where we were when the whole bloody show started! Creep into our rotten little holes and play safe again. You, too, Lynn - you're just the same as the rest of them!"

She cried, "I'm not. I'm not, David. I was just thinking - now -"

"Of me?"

His quickness startled her. His arm was round her, holding him to her. He kissed her with hot angry lips.

"Rowley Cloade?" he said, "that oaf? By God, Lynn, you belong to me."

Then as suddenly as he had taken her, he released her, almost thrusting her away from him.

"I'll miss the train."

He ran headlong down the hillside.

"David... "

He turned his head, calling back:

"I'll ring you when I get to London..."

She watched him running through the gathering gloom, light and athletic and full of natural grace.

Then, shaken, her heart strangely stirred, her mind chaotic, she walked slowly homeward.

She hesitated a little before going in. She shrank from her mother's affectionate welcome, her questions...

Her mother who had borrowed five hundred pounds from people whom

she despised.

"We've no right to despise Rosaleen and David," thought Lynn as she went very softly upstairs. "We're just the same. We'd do anything - anything for money."

She stood in her bedroom, looking curiously at her face in the mirror. It was, she thought, the face of a stranger...

And then, sharply, anger shook her.

"If Rowley really loved me," she thought, "he'd have got that five hundred pounds for me somehow. He would - he would. He wouldn't let me be humiliated by having to take it from David - David -"

David had said he would ring her when he got to London.

She went downstairs, walking in a dream...

Dreams, she thought, could be very dangerous things...

Chapter 14

"Oh, there you are, Lynn." Adela's voice was brisk and relieved. "I didn't hear you come in, darling. Have you been in long?"

"Oh, yes, ages. I was upstairs."

"I wish you'd tell me when you come in, Lynn. I'm always nervous when you're out alone after dark."

"Really, Mums, don't you think I can look after myself?"

"Well, there have been dreadful things in the papers lately. All these discharged soldiers - they attack girls."

"I expect the girls ask for it."

She smiled - rather a twisted smile. Yes, girls did ask for danger... Who, after all, really wanted to be safe...?

"Lynn, darling, are you listening?"

Lynn brought her mind back with a jerk.

Her mother had been talking.

"What did you say, Mums?"

"I was talking about your bridesmaids, dear. I suppose they'll be able to produce the coupons all right. It's very lucky for you having all your demob ones. I'm really terribly sorry for girls who get married nowadays on just their ordinary coupons. I mean they just can't have anything new at all. Not outside, I mean. What with the state all one's undies are in nowadays one just has to go for them. Yes, Lynn, you really are lucky."