Peter had not an idea, really.  He was going through the most amazing set of sensations.  He felt heavy and dull, and as if he were utterly at a loss how to deal with a female of so obviously and totally different a kind from any he had met before; but, with it all, he was very conscious of being glad to be there.  Underneath everything, too, he felt a bit of a dare-devil, which was a delightful experience for a London curate; and still deeper, much more mysteriously and almost a little terrifyingly, something stranger still, that he had known this girl for ages, although he had not seen her for a long time.  “I’m highly privileged, I’m sure,” he said, and could have kicked himself for a stupid ass.

“Oh Lord!” said Julie, with a mock expression of horror; “for goodness’ sake don’t talk like that.  That’s the worst of a parson:  he can’t forget the drawing-room.  At any rate, I’m not sure that I’m highly fortunate, but I thought I ought to give Fate a chance.  Do you smoke?”

“Yes,” said Peter wonderingly.

“Then for goodness’ sake smoke, and you’ll feel better.  No, I daren’t here, but I’m glad you are educated enough to ask me.  Nurses aren’t supposed to smoke in public, you know, and I take it that even you have observed that I’m a nurse.”

She was quite right.  Peter drew on his cigarette and felt more at ease.  “Well, to be absolutely honest, I had,” he said.  “And I observe, moreover, that you are not wearing exactly an English nurse’s uniform, and that you have what I might venture to call a zoological badge.  I therefore conclude that, like my friend Donovan, you hail from South Africa.  What hospital are you in?”

“Quai de France,” she said.  “Know it?”

Peter repressed a start.  “Quai de France?” he queried.  “Where’s that, now?”

At this moment a song started, but his companion dropped her voice to stage whisper and replied:  “End of the harbour, near where the leave-boat starts.  Know it now?”

He nodded, but was saved a reply.

She looked away toward the platform, and he studied her face surreptitiously.  It seemed very young till you looked closely, especially at the eyes, and then you perceived something lurking there.  She was twenty-seven or twenty-eight, he concluded.  She looked as if she knew the world inside out, and as if there were something hidden below the gaiety.  Peter felt curiously and intensely attracted.  His shyness vanished.  He had, and had had, no intimations of the doings of Providence, and nobody could possibly be more sceptical of fate-lines than he, but it dawned on him as he stared at her that he would fathom that look somehow, somewhere.

“I’m practically not made up at all,” she whispered, without turning her head, “so for Heaven’s sake don’t say there’s too much powder on my nose.”

Peter shook silently.  “No, but a faint trace on the right cheek,” he whispered back.  She turned then and looked at him, and her eyes challenged his.  And yet it is to be supposed that Hilda knew nothing whatever about it.