Then he touched Marguerite’s hand as it rested a little behind her on the ledge.  The effect of contact was surprising.  With all his other thoughts he had not ceased to think of the idea of shielding and enveloping her.  But now this idea utterly possessed him.  The music grew louder, and as it were under cover of the music he put his hand round her hand.  It was a venturesome act with such a girl; he was afraid....  The hand lay acquiescent within his!  He tightened the pressure.  The hand lay acquiescent; it accepted.  The flashing realization of her compliance overwhelmed him.  He was holding the very symbol of wild purity, and there was no effort to be free.  None guessed.  None could see.  They two had the astonishing, the incredible secret between them.  He looked at her profile, taking precautions.  No sign of alarm or disturbance.  Her rapt glance was fixed steadily on the orchestra framed in the arched doorway....  Incredible, the soft, warm delicacy of the cotton glove!

The applause at the end of the number awoke them.  He released her hand.  She slipped neatly down from the ledge.

“I think I ought to be going back home....  Father ...” she murmured.  She met his eyes; but his embarrassed eyes would not meet hers.

“Certainly!” he agreed quickly, though they had been in the hall little more than half an hour.  He would have agreed to any suggestion from her.  It seemed to him that the least he could do at that moment was to fulfil unquestioningly her slightest wish.  Then she looked away, and he saw that a deep blush gradually spread over her lovely face.  This was the supreme impressive phenomenon.  Before the blush he was devotional.

V

They walked down Regent Street almost in silence, enjoying simultaneously the silence and solitude of the curving thoroughfare and the memory of the bright, crowded, triumphant scene which they had left.  At Piccadilly Circus George inquired for the new open motor-buses which had just begun to run between the Circus and Putney, passing the Redcliffe Arms.  Already, within a year, the time was historically distant when a policeman had refused to allow the automobile of a Member of Parliament to enter Palace Yard, on the ground that there was no precedent for such a desecration.  The new motor-buses, however, did not run at night.  Human daring had limits, and it was reported that at least one motor-driver, succumbing to the awful nervous strain of guiding these fast expresses through the traffic of the West End, had been taken to the lunatic asylum.  George called a hansom, of which there were dozens idling about.  Marguerite seemed tacitly to object to this act as the germ of extravagance; but it was the only classic thing to do, and he did it.