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woman could hear the pounding of his heart, the quiet breathing, and feel those burning lips pressed so tight against her own. For nearly a minute they remained like this, cleaved together by sheer ecstasy. Then he let her go. ‘Peter!’ she said. ‘Oh, Peter! I thought you would never come.’ She seemed to devour him with her eyes, the while her hands stroked his hair, his face, his neck, and slid up and down his arms. No more was said. She seemed content. Here he was standing in front of her, alive, smiling. Peter—her Peter.
    â€˜When did you come, darling? Tell me quickly. When did you arrive home?’
    â€˜On this afternoon’s tide. I got your letter. All your letters. But let’s walk on. I don’t like hanging round here. In fact I hate it. Let’s move on,’ and he caught her hand, a hand hot and moist, and pulled her from under the lamp. Then he said ‘Stop,’ and held her by the shoulders for a moment, looking down into her passionate face, almost parchment-like in colour beneath the yellowish lamplight. They walked away, crossed the square, turned down Mercedes Street, and so on to the main road, almost deserted now. Once or twice they stopped to look back.
    â€˜If only we were walking away together for always. Far away, Sheila,’ Peter said. They turned off the main road, and plunged into a long street under some railway arches. ‘It is too late now to go further,’ he said. They sought the shelter of one of the arches, and in the security of the darkness embraced each other again, in absolute silence, as though each were numbed by the wave of feeling that flooded them both. After a while she pushed him away. His face seemed a mere white splash upon the darkness. It was so dark that but for this, and the sounds of his heavy breathing, she would hardly have realised he was there at all. ‘Oh, Peter darling,’ she exclaimed, ‘you’ve come.’
    â€˜Yes, I’ve come, and here I am, dear Sheila.’ He stood there, palpitating, his hands hot and trembling, bathed in the very aura of her presence. ‘I can’t tell you how happy I am. I have longed for this. Longed , longed for it. Think of it. A whole year almost.’ The whole weight of her body lay against his own. ‘We must go somewhere else. At once,’ he said, and putting one arm round her, drew her out from the arch.
    â€˜Where? Where shall we go?’ she said, her head heavy on his shoulder.
    â€˜Anywhere. I don’t care where.’ He seemed to half carry, half drag the woman along the road, keeping close to the wall. ‘I hate all this,’ he said savagely. ‘Hate it. Sheila—Sheila—I’m so happy. So happy.’
    â€˜In here,’ she whispered into his ear. ‘In here.’ They sat down on the wooden floor beneath a hoist door.
    â€˜God!’ he said. ‘Suppose you hadn’t come. But you have. You have. You are here.’ He laughed and buried his face on her breast. He felt her hands upon his neck, the while his own, charged as though by some powerful current, sought desperately at her clothing. ‘Sheila! Sheila!’
    Before she realised it, he was looking down into her face, her head resting on his hands, holding it from contact with the floor itself.
    â€˜Dear, dear boy,’ she said. ‘I am so happy because you are. So happy because you are.’ But he heard nothing, saw nothing but this white face below him, felt nothing save this powerful wave of feeling that flooded his whole being. She caught his hands that trembled so violently and smothered them with kisses.
    â€˜Dear Peter,’ she said. ‘Dear Peter.’
    So they lay, bound body and soul, his breathing sounding almost thunderous in her ears, immersed at last in the flood. Far off across the river sounded the roar of a ship’s cable going home, and from an adjacent hut the sudden barking of a dog, which struck