Mr. Fane-Herbert decided to be in London with the spring. Ibble’s and Ordith’s were to remain independent, an arrangement of which both he and Nick Ordith saw the advantages, and which Aggett alone regretted wholeheartedly. Three weeks in Japan would complete Mr. Fane-Herbert’s work in the East, and to Tokio he went, with Margaret and her mother, at the end of February.

Soon afterwards the Pathshire, having finished her refitting, sailed for Yokohama, and on the first Friday in March, John and Hugh, who had obtained week-end leave, arrived at Kamakura. That evening, when the hotel dinner was over, they sat together in the verandah of John’s bedroom. Below them stretched the lawn, its size exaggerated by the semi-darkness, its nearer edge, gloomy under the hotel’s shadow, slashed, where the gleam of windows fell upon it, with parallelograms of yellow light.

“They come to-morrow,” Hugh said.

“This will be the last that you’ll see of them before they leave for home.”

Hugh nodded. “Margaret will be glad to go.”

“Because Ordith stays?”

“Partly—though I think she has cast off Ordith and the thought of him.... But she’ll be glad to be rid of the place and its associations. London will give her something else to think about.”

“It’s almost incredible,” John said slowly, “that anyone out here now should be able to reach London within seventeen days. It seems further away than that.”

“But I like the East,” Hugh protested.

John laughed. “Good God!” he exclaimed, “so do I; but that has nothing to do with it.” He knocked out his pipe against the verandah rails. “Anyhow,” he said, “it’s a long lie-in to-morrow. Throw us a cigarette, Hugh.”

He looked out across the lawn, across the broad belt of trees that stood between the garden and the beach. The sea was near—not that sea into which steel ships vomited their bilge, but the quiet sea of kissing sands and straight horizon which had been his first love. To-morrow did not matter; that darkness, those stars unsnared by sextants, that sea undivided into ranges, were suggestive of too many to-morrows, too many yesterdays. From an open window came voices and laughter, and the tinkle of a curtain being drawn.

“Women,” Hugh said.

John leaned over the rail.

“That curtain has cut a patch of light out of the lawn. They’ll all go out one by one.”

“Ours won’t—not yet. I’m not going to turn in for hours.”

“I know,” John said, reading his thought. “I hate wasting leave in sleep. Even if I turn out late, I like to wake early, and imagine the Reveille sounding and the calling of ‘Guard an’ steerage.’ ‘Show-a-leg, show-a-leg, lash up and sto-ow!’—and you lying in bed, with the whole day before you—away from the ship.”

“This being Friday,” Hugh observed, “we have to-night, and Saturday night, and Sunday night—two clear days.”

“I wonder what would happen if we didn’t go back—if we hid somewhere and never went back—if we started on our own. Why should we go back?” John said, for the sake of saying it.

“If we didn’t, we’d be caught. If we weren’t caught, we’d starve.... The extraordinary thing is,” Hugh went on, in a puzzled voice, “that we can’t stay as we are. I’m happy as can be sitting here; yet I shall get up presently and put an end to this evening by going to bed. I don’t want to move. It’s glorious here in the dark.... Look at the lawn—like a great pool.”

“You want to lay hold on the instant,” John said. “You can’t any more than you can lay hold on eternity. They are the two infinities that meet somewhere. Probably from some point of view—if only you could reach it—the instantaneous and the eternal appear as one and the same. But the proofs we have of that are pretty vague: there’s that extraordinary consciousness—coming for no apparent reason—that a given instant is of tremendous importance, that it is going to be remembered, that somehow it’s a source of unknown events to come; then, at the other end of the scale, there’s the recollection of certain instants—more than mere memory, a kind of preservation. An instant years-old by the measure of time, remains intact, perfect; and you know that it’s never going to perish or fade. Usually the occasion was trivial....”

“I wish,” said Hugh out of the silence, “the Commander could hear his young gentlemen talking like this.”

John laughed uneasily. “I had managed to forget the ship.”

“All the same,” Hugh went on, “I like vague talk. I like listening to you—even though I don’t understand too much of it. Vague talk gives me what I imagine you were driving at, what you spoke of before—a sense of eternity.”

A watchman’s bell rang faintly in the distant village. When it could be heard no longer, John said:

“A sense of eternity—what a phrase that is!”

Light, quick footsteps sounded on the path; then the heavier tread of a man. The girl stopped suddenly, touched her companion’s arm, and, when he looked down, laughed breathlessly—an odd laugh, half-confidential, half-embarrassed.

“Oh, Torwood,” she exclaimed, “I do so love this East!”

He threw his arm round her, and, with a tremendous air of proprietorship, almost dragged her indoors. Little gasps of excitement were her show of protest. As they passed through the room below the man could be heard speaking quick words to her, in a voice unevenly controlled; speaking with strange disregard for the public room’s bleak emptiness and for the nearness of those who were sleeping, for the stare of electric bulbs, which, when they shine singly over places deserted till the morning, have so intent an air of watchfulness and curiosity.

II

On Saturday evening Margaret and Mrs. Fane-Herbert reached the hotel. After dinner, Mrs. Fane-Herbert said to John:

“I hear you changed your mind about leaving the Navy.”

“It was scarcely a question of my changing my mind. It didn’t get as far as that. You see——” He looked aside and saw that Margaret was watching him. “At any rate, I am settled down to it now,” he said.

Hugh broke in with talk of Kamakura.

“When does your leave end?” Margaret asked.

“Monday.”

“You must go back to your ship, then?”

“Yes, by noon.”

She turned to John. “And you, too?”

Something in her intonation caught his attention, and he looked swiftly at her.

“Yes,” he said. “You must send us news of London as our share in your home-coming.... I want to hear of your great-grandmother’s welcome.”

“Her great-grandmother?” Mrs. Fane-Herbert put in.

“The portrait, mother—the one over the stairs.” Then to John: “She’ll give me comments with her welcome, a lecture for her runaway.”

There was a hint of bitterness in that; but John’s remembering that conversation on the first evening she had known him stung her with the sting—half-pleasant, half-painful—of childhood days recalled in dark moments. For now she was easily stung to sorrow or to a kind of fierce joy. She had wanted desperately to talk, to tell someone how free she was—Ordith being gone. Untold, her freedom seemed incomplete. But neither her father nor her mother had spoken. They had learnt the facts, accepted them; she had attempted no explanation; not one word had been said. This silence had a hardening quality. Her experience, the vivid remembrance of which might have flowed easily away, was somehow frozen in her mind, like a sin unconfessed. There was no one to whom she could go. Warmth of heart, comradeship, the simplest affection she starved for. But this being left alone, this frigidness of spirit, this intolerable independence....

John had known, at least, that her heart was full. It was as if she had seen a friendly face in the midst of a vast unnoticing crowd. When she said good-night to him she gave him her hand with new confidence. Then, out of his sight, she was suddenly angry with herself as for a foolishness, a weakness for the first time realized. An instant she stood unmoving outside her bedroom door—her mind tripped somehow, taken unawares.

And in the morning she settled at once to a book, glad of an occupation so isolating.

“You’re very deep in that book, Margaret,” Hugh said, as he passed her. “Aren’t you coming out?”

“I want to finish it before lunch. Do you mind?”

“I see the last of you and mother to-morrow.”

“I’ll come this afternoon, ... or shall I come now?”

He looked into her upturned face. Her hand was on the arm of her chair to raise herself.

“No, you odd sister.... No; you’re not to come—of course not.”

She went late to lunch, and was surprised to find Hartington at her mother’s table, with John and Hugh. He said that his leave lasted only till that evening.

“Can’t you stay and go back with us to-morrow?” Hugh asked.

“No.” He shook his head. “But I wanted to see the homeward goers before they went. That’s really all I came for.”

The meal over, he had no difficulty in seeing Margaret alone, for she felt that it was to see her he had come.

“Well,” she said, “secret emissary, what is it?”

“You know there’s something?”

“You are full of suppressed news.”

“Yes; good news—oh, such good news!”

“Thank God for that!” she breathed.

“You expected bad?”

“I fear it always. There’s nothing definite that I expect. But somehow——”

“No,” he said quickly. “This is good, anyhow. Lynwood is free—through Wingfield Alter.”

She gave no sign of pleasure so eager was she. “How? Really free?”

“Really free,” he smiled. “Are you beginning to disbelieve in freedom?... The mail came in after Lynwood left the ship. A letter for him from his mother, and a letter for me from Alter. I have them both here. Alter is to marry Mrs. Lynwood. He has taken the first definite step towards getting Lynwood out of the Service.”

“When will he be free? Will he come home with us?”

“Not possible. It takes time. But now it is only a question of time—a couple of months, perhaps.”

“You haven’t given him his mother’s letter?”

“No.”

“You haven’t told him?”

“No; I came to you first. I want you to tell him.”

Something stifled her inclination to ask “Why?”

Hartington went on hesitatingly: “It means so much to him, you see. It’s such tremendous news, because he has no hope or expectation of it. So ... Miss Fane-Herbert, I want you to tell him.”

Her eyes widened for a moment. They looked out beyond Hartington. Then, with abrupt decision, she said, with a fluttering, pleading gesture towards him: “No; you. You must tell him. It’s your right. You brought it about.”

“I wrote to Alter—that’s all.”

“It came about through you. Oh, long before the writing of that letter, you helped him—didn’t you?—perhaps not deliberately. You don’t realize how much you have done for him. Certainly you don’t realize what he feels for you—the strangest mixture of affection, and admiration, and respect—but overwhelming. You are all that’s best in men for him! And he’d like you to bring this news. He’ll be glad, years on, that it was you who brought it. Friendship between men is so much more substantial, more secure. You must tell him,” she concluded. “It’s your right.”

“Why do you insist so much on right? I waive it if it exists. That’s why I came here.”

“Oh,” she cried, with a smile in acknowledgment of his unveiling of her half-pretence, “I want it to be you!”

He laughed back at her, so that her colour came....

He took John away into the country roads, where the cherry-trees were in blossom and the sun lay flat on the long, low, irregular branches, reminding them of illustrations in Japanese fairy-books. There, as they walked, the news was given, the two letters read.

“You’ve done all this,” John said, and remained speechless.

“I can’t help wondering what it is exactly that I have done or helped to do. What’s it going to lead to?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that this—the breaking free—is a beginning, not an end.”

“I know.... But there’s time enough to think of what’s to come. I won’t think of it now.... Hartington, couldn’t you come too?”

“No; we shape different courses now.”

“But we three shall see each other often—in London. I’ve never seen you in London. And at Oxford, you must stay with me there.”

Hartington looked wistfully at him. “Oh yes,” he said, “we shall see each other often.”

They found on their return that the others had finished tea. Only Hugh remained by the empty cups. He sprang up to meet them.

“I am glad, you civilian! Margaret told me.”

“She knows?”

“I told her,” Hartington said. Then, “Have I stolen your news?”

“There is no one left to tell,” John answered, laughing. “I want to tell thousands of people.”

Later, he asked: “Where is Margaret?”

“I don’t know. She disappeared after tea.”

They sat smoking. Everything was pleasant to John now: the click of a cigarette-case being shut, the tapping of the cigarette, the long silences in which none of them had need of speech. The afternoon had begun to fail. The sun slanted yellow across the window-panes and fell in rippling beams of light and shadow upon the pale matting. Outside, the lawn and distant trees had taken on those soft golden tones which, at the approach of summer’s dusk, flow across English fields, investing them with kindly magic. Then the church tower seems more than ever still; the churchyard silent, but not terrible. The bird rustles in the hedgerow; you imagine his bright eyes. The cricket stumps yellow against the green; the shadows flicker on the pitch; the bat sounds clearer, sweeter; the ball runs smoothly, and with peculiar ease; the players and the umpires in their white coats grow nebulous and vague.

“‘And a ghostly batsman plays to the bowling of a ghost,’” John said.

“Back in England already?”

“This summer in England!”

He went bareheaded into the cool air, across the lawn, springy under his feet, down the path among the trees where the white sand lay heavy, on to the shore. There was Margaret, near the waves’ edge. He approached her, and, because she was so still, touched the billowing muslin she wore.

“You know?”

“Yes. John, how happy you must be! Always you’ll remember to-day. It’s your hour—one of the three or four. They go by so soon.”

“And you? Are you not happy?... You are free, too.” He faltered as he spoke of this, of which she had never spoken.

She shivered, as if a cold breeze had struck her.

“Yes.... I understand.... I, too, am free. I know.”

She turned to him eyes full of light.

“Oh, Margaret,” he cried, his arms outstretched, “don’t look towards the future. To-day’s enough, Margaret. What is it you are afraid of?”

She said, trembling under his touch, close to him so that her dress brushed lightly against his coat, “What is it we’re both afraid of? We are both afraid.”

For answer, in his primitive wisdom, he swept her to him, overwhelming her thought. Lip to lip they clung, she imprisoned, silenced, caught up from fear. His arms about her in fierce pressure were a whole armour against doubt—more than armour, a charm, for the arrows themselves were diverted and flew wide of her, forgotten. Flames ran down her as his mouth burned against her throat, and her lips, opened now, were full of the sharp sea-wind.

She fell from him a little, still held.

“That once,” she said, with caught breath, “that instant lives. That stands. Nothing can touch it or steal it.... Don’t let me go—not yet, my darling—don’t let me go!”

He drew her close again, but more gently. And she said:

“It’s our victory.”

“Nothing reverses it.”

“Tell me——”

He told her his love again and again, her arm drawing him down so that the fresh scent of her hair was over him.

“Nothing takes those words back”—his kiss fell on her—“or the touch.”

“But here we begin,” he protested, wondering at the jealous terror that possessed her. “We shall go on from this for ever. Nothing is taken away. We build and build. In a few years, when I——”

“Oh!” she cried, “in a few years—who knows? We don’t break free so easily as this, John. The net sweeps wider than we know. It yields—that’s its strength. And presently it draws us in again. So it will go on—till the breaking.... You see, even you and I go on strengthening it, making new meshes despite ourselves. If ever we are to stand together in the world, first you have to gain money and power. You have to fight. Then—it’s inevitable—we would have to teach our children to fight—equip them for ‘the battle of life!’ And they would look round to find themselves in our net.

“But it’s going to end. The world will change its motive when this motive of gain has made it suffer so terribly, so obviously, that it realizes the cause of its suffering. We have to suffer—we or our children. It’s near now. The whole system may smash—the good with the bad—perhaps that’s the only way; and we may slip back into the Dark Ages again. I don’t know....”

“But now——” John said.

“Now? Yes—that’s ours.... Oh, for God’s sake! touch me and hold me as if you would never, never let me go....”

And presently, standing away from him, she was saying with composure: “Let’s go back. It’s getting dark. Look how the colour is fading from the sea.”

They went up the beach to the edge of the tree belt. There she checked him. Turning, they looked down upon their tracks to where, in the instant now gone by, the sand had been roughed and broken by their feet. Soon the water, which from the gathering darkness had drawn its first gleams of phosphorescence, would smooth their footprints away.