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silent. Five minutes later the girl got out on to the pavement, stuffing a soiled handkerchief into the pocket of her coat.
    She turned back to the car, and stooped to the low entrance. “Good night,” she said softly. “It’s been lovely.”
    “Good night, Mona,” he said. “Thursday.”
    “Thursday,” she said. “I’ll be there.”
    She stood for a moment fumbling in her bag for her latch-key; then the door opened and she vanished inside. Chambers sat watching her till she was out of sight, then started up the engine and drove off.
    The girl ran quietly upstairs to her room and shut the door behind her. It was not the first time that she had been kissed in a dark motor-car on the way back from a dance, but she had never been much moved by it before. It had never produced in her such a mixture of feelings. She felt safe with him, queerly safe, though with her reason she reflected that his motor-car was hardly a safe place for her. She understood him better than she had ever understood the others: there was no guile about him. His irresponsible talk sometimespuzzled her because she wasn’t used to it, but in this his mood was very like her own. She felt that she could fall into his ways very easily. He never worried her at all.
    She got into bed and pulled the clothes around her, happy and a little thoughtful. She was not quite in love with him, but she knew that she could be very deeply in love with him if she were to let herself go. She did not quite know if she wanted to do that. She was a sensible girl, and older than her twenty-one years in experience. She knew very little of him, or his background. He had been to Cranwell, the cadet college; she knew that. That meant he was an officer of the regular Air Force, in it for a career, not just a temporary officer for the war. She knew that she was not quite of his social class, and she did not resent it. Her father had risen from the lower deck and kept a little furniture shop in a back street. They were different; you couldn’t get away from that. She knew that her father and mother would disapprove of her going about with an officer, especially a regular officer. They’d say that no good would come of it. Probably it wouldn’t. But she was going to meet him Thursday, all the same.
    She drifted into sleep, happy and smiling to herself.
    Chambers drove back to the aerodrome, still tingling with the warmth of the girl’s presence. He reflected semi-humorously as he went, that he was probably making a fool of himself. He had no sisters, and he had not had a great deal to do with girls. His family comprised a widowed mother who lived in a suburb of Bristol, and an older brother.
    Instinctively, he knew that he was dangerously close to a real love affair. Never before in his life had he thought much about marriage, but he was thinking of it now. His reason told him that marriage was absurd. He was far too hard up on his pay as a flying officer evento think of it; moreover, from all he had heard, you didn’t marry barmaids—you seduced them. He shied away from that: he had a poor opinion of it as a hobby, and he wouldn’t have known how to set about it. It disturbed him that he should feel rested when he was with her. He could say whatever came into his head without fear of misunderstanding. She was young, and she was healthy, and to him she was very beautiful.
    He drove into the car park of the mess, moodily cursing his lot as an officer. He didn’t think that it would be a very good thing to marry a barmaid if he wanted to get on in the Royal Air Force. He felt resentment: the world should have been organised upon some different basis.
    He parked the car, draped the rug over its bonnet, and lit the rabbit-lamp to find his way through the bicycles. It glowed lambent in the darkness of the blackout, a luminous ghost rabbit. Its red eyes led him to the back door of the mess.
    In the ante-room he paused and looked at the operations board. Cloud, it appeared, was