Up and up and up went the train and Laura’s spirits with it. Mrs. Cloud was in one corner of the compartment and Justin in the other, and there were two squares of glass, unlike prim English carriage windows, opening upon wonders, black mountains and clouds and brilliant grass, and under their feet, but far below, the terraced lines of the track over which they had already passed. Sometimes a drift of white hid them. Laura thought that it was smoke, but Justin said “no—clouds.” Imagine! She was so high up that she was looking down on clouds!

Justin laughed at her.

“Beats Beech Hill, doesn’t it?”

“No, it doesn’t,” she said instantly; but she grew more and more excited. And all the time they talked to her and she to them—though Justin was quieter than she thought he need be when he hadn’t seen her for two years—of all things under the sun and of how glad she was to see them: and the train climbed higher and higher. It stopped once, at a snow-covered siding, for them to drink coffee in inch-thick cups, and the coffee or the air, the air that was like old still wine, must have gone to Laura’s head a little. She certainly talked too much, fluttering like a distracted butterfly between Paris and Justin, and the right-hand window and the left-hand window, and how was Gran’papa and Savonarola and cushions for Mrs. Cloud. She did not even stop in the tunnel. And the discarded ghost of a disappointment found that Laura was not the only person in the carriage worth haunting. Justin had smoked himself into one of his silences. He was not sure that Laura was improved. Her voice was rather high. He thought that she was showing off.

He was right. She was so desperately anxious that they should be pleased with her: and excitement had oiled her discretion. She could not resist marshalling all her acquirements at once for their inspection.

Mrs. Cloud suddenly pulled down Laura’s glowing face to her and kissed it.

“I can’t help it. I’m nearly bursting.” Laura answered her apologetically, though she had said nothing at all. And then, with a rush, “Oh, Mrs. Cloud, you are a dear!” They perfectly understood each other.

But Justin stared at them and disapproved. It was so unlike his mother to be demonstrative ... and he wished Laura would sit down and read.... She talked too much.

She did at last, as the dusk fell and they left the high lands behind them, settle down to the dear, blameless English magazines, but not before she had had him thoroughly on edge.

By the end of two days she was on edge herself. She always remembered Milan as a series of spires and roofs, up and down which she toiled after a Justin who never waited for her, who always made his remarks just too far off for her to hear what he said. And he hated repeating himself. She did not know what had come to either of them. They were always on the verge of perfect agreement or a serious quarrel and nothing ever happened, except that Justin had the bored look in his eyes that Laura dreaded, and Laura had a lump in her throat all day long.

Yet sometimes Laura wondered if she imagined the whole thing. Mrs. Cloud did not seem disturbed. Mrs. Cloud drove with them in the mornings, and rested in the afternoons, and listened to them in the evenings, and beamed at them both as if she found life as pleasant as usual. And she approved of Laura. Of that there was no doubt. It was Mrs. Cloud who nodded congratulations when Laura, on their first evening, in her first evening dress, swished her way in and out of the dining-tables, very grown-up and shy and uncomfortable. Mrs. Cloud would not have changed Justin for a dozen Lauras, and yet, watching her entry, quite alive to the heads that turned, and the murmur at the nearer tables, she wished she had a beautiful young daughter of her own of whom to be critically proud.

“Green’s your colour!” said Mrs. Cloud, as Laura settled herself. No more—but it was the accolade.

Laura blushed and glanced at Justin.

“Chianti or white wine?” he enquired with some interest.

“No, thank you. Water, please.” (... Men were queer!)

“Oh, if you’d rather!” (... Odd things, women!)

It was the last straw when Art, the Italian jade, plucked at Justin’s sleeve, whispering that two were company ... and Justin went out to Pavia all by himself. Mrs. Cloud had a headache. Laura, because she felt like it, spent her afternoon at the Campo Santo, and, among tombs, made up her mind to have it out with Justin.

She had a certain desperate directness in emergencies that might easily have been mistaken for courage. She had quite the average capacity of a woman for subterfuge, but, linked with it, a curious dread of being spared in her turn. She could face an ugly truth, but she could not endure it tailored. She must know where she stood. She must know where she stood with Justin, risking snubs; though she dreaded being snubbed as only soft-shelled youth can. She must know what she done wrong. She was quite sure that, whatever it was, it was her fault, because if it were not her fault, it would be Justin’s.... And that was impossible.... She did not pretend to understand Justin, she knew she was not clever enough for that, but at least she realized that he had no faults.... She was not quite a fool.... There were certain inexplicabilities, of course, but they were not her presumptuous business....

One does not criticize one’s god, or only when one has ceased to believe in him. But God is not God when one ceases to believe in Him.

She attacked Justin the next evening, choosing the wrong moment, when he was tired, ready for a pipe and a book rather than argument. But he had been kind to her at dinner and she had made him laugh. (At least she could always make him laugh.) She thought his mood could not change in half an hour.

But it had changed. He was absorbed, if not somnolent: had not a glance to spare as she hesitated in front of him.

“Justin? Aren’t you coming out again?”

He shook his head.

She looked out of the window. The moon glimmered in the white sky, thin and flat and unsubstantial, like a peeled honesty leaf: and, below, the square was glamorous. The cathedral that rose out of it, like June woods turned to stone, quivered in the warm dusk as on the verge of disenchantment. The dots of lamp-light increased like buttercups all opening at once, and among them people moved in vague masses. A shrill of voices and laughter floated upwards.

Laura turned to Justin, straining his eyes over Baedeker’s Northern Italy. The sight of the crowd had stirred her, made her want to go down into it, just as the sight of the sea makes you want to bathe.

“It’s only half-past eight,” she hazarded.

He read on.

She glanced across at Mrs. Cloud, half asleep at the other end of the huge deserted hotel sitting-room. They were the only people indoors on that warm spring night of Italy.

Suddenly she attacked him—

“Justin, you’ll hurt your eyes.” Then, with a curtness that was pure embarrassment, “Justin, what’s the matter?”

“The matter?” He raised his eyebrows.

“Yes. I want to know.” She hesitated. “Is anything wrong? Have I done anything you don’t like? What makes you——?”

“What?”

“Oh, I don’t know—so funny to me. So—grumpy.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know——” he began stiffly.

She flared out.

“Of course you know. It’s been perfectly awful. You sit on me and sit on me—and go out by yourself—and fidget at meals when I talk——”

“I say, don’t wake Mother,” he warned her.

Hastily she dropped an octave.

“So I think you might tell me what’s the matter,” she concluded.

“Oh rot, Laura,” said Justin uncomfortably. “What should be the matter?”

He waited a moment for her answer; but she said nothing: was waiting in her turn. He looked at his book.

If he once began reading again....

“I don’t know,” she said hastily, “but there is. You might tell me, Justin.” She put her hand upon his open book, would not budge as he tried politely to move it. “You’ve got to tell me,” she insisted.

It was a very young and ignorant thing to do, crudely provocative if it had not been so utterly unconscious. A woman or an older man would have laughed and understood and found it charming enough. But it annoyed Justin. He hated to be bothered. He had a keen sense of his own dignity. Above all he had a horror of being inveigled into anything approaching sentimentality. And he was out of touch with Laura. He had been prepared for a jolly little girl, not for a young woman with obvious faults and disconcerting garments. He was just too old to label her challenge ‘cheek,’ yet not old enough to make allowances for her hobble-de-hoyhood, to differentiate between impudence and a lack of savoir-faire. Ever since Lucerne he had been, though he had no idea of analysing his attitude, disappointed, on the edge of boredom. He was as unaware as she herself of the beauty of her hand, he merely knew that he didn’t want a great paw sprawling over his book. He wanted to say “Get out!” And she stood there and waited!

He leaned back in his chair with elaborate indifference.

“Justin?”

She was actually smiling at him—pleased, he supposed, with the success of her idiotic performance.

“I don’t know that it’s anything much,” he was impelled to begin. “It doesn’t matter anyway. It’s only——” He broke off.

“Tell me,” she insisted. And again he disliked her tone. Who was she to order him about? Oh, well, if she wanted it she should have it....

“You’re rather different from what I expected.” He stopped. It was not perfectly easy, annoyed as he was.

“How?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“How?” She had a touch of colour in her cheek. Her bright eyes compelled him.

“You’re—rather French, you know. You don’t seem quite—natural.”

“How?”

“Well, your clothes——”

Her face fell.

“Oh, Justin, don’t you like them?”

“They’re rather bright.”

“Oh!”

He did not volunteer anything.

“What else, Justin?”

“Oh, how do I know?” He was impatient. “It’s not my business. But I hate scent and chatter and high heels and things that jingle. And you come down to dinner with your hair fussed out like an actress. But it’s all right, I expect.”

“I see.” She managed to smile at him before she swished across to the window, with the little un-English swing of her body that was another of her ways that vaguely irritated him. He made an impatient movement. Of course he didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but why on earth did she worry him?

“I only mean——You wouldn’t see Mother——Every one looks at you!” And then, “I’m sorry, Laura, but you made me say what I think.”

“Of course. I’m glad. I’m glad to know what you think.”

Her voice grew higher and higher as she tried to over-top the catch in it. He had put a match to her quick young pride, and it blazed and raged within her till she was quite sick with the physical pain of it. The intolerable, humiliating tears rose under her lids. Always with her back to him she took her handkerchief, screwed it to a point, and removed them with precise care. She could not quite control them, the square danced mistily, but at least she would not show a stained face. Head up before everything!

‘Not natural,’ ‘like an actress.’... Oh, it wasn’t fair of Justin ... wasn’t fair not to give her time to get used to him again.... He’d been grown-up so much longer, but didn’t he remember what it felt like to be shy and awkward and uncertain?... How could one cover it up but by being glib?... At Paris they liked her.... Mrs. Cloud liked her.... Mrs. Cloud had liked her green dress.... She didn’t know what he meant.... It wasn’t vanity, everybody waved their hair.... She couldn’t help her voice being loud.... She had never realized that she was so full of faults.... She had only wanted to make herself nice—and now it was all wrong.... And after looking forward so to Italy.... Not that she cared ... not that she cared a hang!...

“Don’t worry, Laura!” Justin was stirred by a vague compunction, though he wished that she did not find it necessary to stand between him and the last of the light. “What does it matter? I told you—it’s nothing to do with me.”

She whirled round indignantly, all eyes and flame.

“Whom else has it got to do with but you and Mrs. Cloud and Gran’papa? If you feel that way I’ve got to alter things. It’s dreadful! It’s dreadful that you don’t like me any more.”

He was obliged to smile at that—a smile that lit up his face as sunshine brightens a room: and suddenly, for the first time since their meeting, he was at home with her again. The simplicity of her passionate distress was so familiar, so entirely the Laura he had missed, that the two alienating years were blotted out, as the darkness was blotting out Laura’s skirts and offending airs and graces, leaving him his foundling again in one of her tragi-comic rages, his rum old Laura, raw from conflict with life and Aunt Adela.

She must be smoothed down!... She must be smoothed down at once!...

“Here, dry up, Laura,” he advised her, “and don’t talk so much. You’re right, it’s getting too dark to read. Come on out with me and eat spaghetti on the pavement. They say that’s the thing to do when there’s a moon.”

For an open-mouthed moment she stared at him: then, with a comprehension of his change of attitude that was uncanny, controlled herself, controlled her choking need of a good cry, nodded cheerfully, and ran upstairs for her hat, her old straw hat at the bottom of her trunk that she had not meant to wear in Italy.

It was going to be all right.... He was going to understand.... He was going to be himself again ... if she only kept quiet and wore her old clothes.... Oh, all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord!... She dashed downstairs.

It was a cloudless night. The macaroni was delicious. The clang of the trams was like Eastern music. Laura was quiet and sweet. Justin found that he was enjoying himself, and was moved to tell all about his tour around the world, and she was deeply interested and asked extraordinarily intelligent questions, and there was no shadow upon them any more, save the shadow of the great cathedral, black and white and wonderful under the moon.

It was late when they came back to an amused, forsaken Mrs. Cloud, and were eloquent for half an hour upon moonlight and macaroni and Milan.

And Justin said good-night to Laura and shook hands with her properly instead of grunting off to bed as he generally did. He said she was to sleep well. She said she would.

Yet the dawn a few hours later, nosing damply in between venetian blinds, surprised Laura, with wet brushes and a determined mouth, still hard at work before her looking-glass, brushing, brushing, brushing the vanity out of her splendid hair.