302 



The Review of Reviews. 



September 1, 1906. 



" They would," I answered. " Damn them and 

 him!" 



But that is by the way. 



He was clearly astonished to find himself face 

 to face with a man. His note changed. " Who the 

 devil are you?" he asked. 



" My retort was the cheap expedient of re-echoing, 

 " Who the devil are you ?" 



■' Well," he said. 



" I'm coming along this path if I like," I said. 

 " See ? It's a public path — just as this used to be 

 public land. You've stolen the land — ^\ou and 

 yours, and now you want to steal the right-of-way. 

 You'll ask us to get off the face of the earth next. 

 I shan't oblige. See?" 



I was shorter and I suppose a couple of years 

 younger than he, but I had the improvised club in 

 my pocket gripped ready, and I would have fought 

 with him very cheerfully. But he fell a step back- 

 ward as I came towards him. 



■' Socialist, I presume ?" he said, alert and quiet 

 and with the faintest note of badinage. 



" One of many." 



" We're all socialists nowadays," he remarked 

 philosophically, " and I haven't the faintest inten- 

 tion of disputing your right-of-way." 



" You'd better not," I said. 



" No !" 



•' No." 



He replaced his cigar, and there was a brief 

 pause. " Catching a train ?" he threw out. 



It seemed absurd not to answer. " Yes," I said, 

 shortly. 



He said it was a pleasant evening for a walk. 



I hovered for a moment, and there was my path 

 before me, and he stood aside. There seemed 

 nothing to do but to go on. " Good night," said 

 he, as that intention took effect. 



I growled a surly good night. 



I felt like a bombshell of swearing that must 

 presently burst with some violence as I went on my 

 silent way. He had so completely got the best of 

 our encounter. 



VII. 



There comes a memory, an odd intermixture of 

 two entirelv divergent things, that stands out with 

 the intensest vividness. 



As I went across the last open meadow, following 

 the short cut to Checkshill station, I perceived I 

 had two shadows. 



The thing jumped into my mind and stopped its 

 tumid flow for a moment. I remember the intel- 

 ligent detachment of my sudden interest. I turned 

 sharplv, and stood looking at the moon and the 

 great, white comet, that the drift of the clouds had 

 now rather suddenly unveiled. 



The comet was perhaps twenty degrees from the 

 moon. What a wonderful thing it looked floating 

 there, a greenish-white apparition in the dark-blue 

 deeps ! It looked brighter than the moon because 



it was smaller, but the shadow it cast, though clearer 

 cut, was much fainter than the moon's shadow. I 

 went on noting these facts, watching my two shadows 

 precede me. 



I am totally unable to account for the sequence 

 of my thoughts on this occasion. But suddenly, as 

 if I had come on this new fact round a comer, 

 the comet was out of my mind again, and I was 

 face to face with an absolutely new idea. I wonder 

 sometimes if the two shadows I cast, one with a sort 

 of feminine faintness with regard to the other and 

 not quite so tall, may not have suggested the word 

 or the thought of an assignation to my mind. All 

 I have clear is that with the certitude of intuition 

 I knew what it was had brought the youth in even- 

 ing dress outside the shrubbery. Of course ! He 

 had come to meet Nettie ! 



Once the mental process was started it took no 

 time at all. The day which had been full of per- 

 plexities for me, the mysterious, invisible thing that 

 had held Nettie and myself apart, the unaccount- 

 able, strange something in her manner, was revealed 

 and explained. 



I knew now why she had looked guilty at my ap- 

 pearance, w^hat had brought her out that afternoon, 

 why she had hurried me in, the nature of the " book " 

 she had run back to fetch, the reason why she had 

 wanted me to go back by the highroad, and why 

 she had pitied me. It was all in the instant clear 

 to me. 



You must imagine me a black, little creature, 

 suddenly stricken still — for a moment standing rigid 

 — and then again suddenly becoming active with 

 an impotent gesture, becoming audible with an 

 inarticulate cry, with two little shadows mocking my 

 dismay, and about this figure you must conceive a 

 great wide space of moonlit grass, rimmed by the 

 looming suggestion of distant trees — trees very low 

 and faint and dim, and over it all the domed 

 serenity of that wonderful, luminous night. 



For a little while this realisation stunned my mind. 

 My thoughts came to a pause, staring at my dis- 

 covery. Meanwhile my feet and my previous direc- 

 tion carried me through the warm darkness to Checks- 

 hill station with its little lights, to the ticket-office 

 window, and so to the train. 



I remember myself, as it were, waking up to the 

 thing — I was alone in one of the dingy third-class 

 compartments of that time — and the sudden, nearly 

 frantic, insurgence of my rage. I stood up with 

 the cry of an angry animal, and smote my fist with 

 all mv strength against the panel of wood before 

 me. 



Curiously enough I have completely forgotten my 

 mood after that for a little while, but I know that 

 later, for a minute perhaps, I hung for a time out 

 of the carriage mth the door open, contemplating a 

 leap from the train. It was to be a dramaric leap, 

 and then I would go storming back to her, de- 

 nounce her, overwhelm her ; and I hung, urging 



