Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/273

 Kit, coming out of his three o'clock in the morning torpor, became conscious of her as something more than a shadow, a young woman, slim, pale, with dark hair and a wavy and expressive mouth. Her voice had sounded strange and musical in the hush of the great silence. She was looking along the street in the direction of Oxford Circus.

"You don't often see it like this."

"No," said Kit.

"Just as though the whole world was dead, except us two."

She smiled a sudden upward smile at him before walking on,—but she had ceased to be a shadow, and in the dimness of one of the many streets running southwards into Soho, the very dimness of her emphasized her coming to life. Her voice had sounded gentle and sensitive, and his glimpse of her face, pale under the shadowy hair, had left him very much awake. Tom Roland had written a song upon "The pale flowers of London drifting on the flowing streets," and the girl's face was flower-like and pale.

"Off Plumpton Street, isn't it?" said Kit, just for something to say.

"Orange Court."

"I know it. Those workmen's flats?"

"Yes. We share one."

"O," said Kit, and was wonderingly silent.

The girl took a look at him as they passed under a lamp.

"Rather young—aren't you!"

He smiled, unprovoked by a challenge that is annoying to most young men.

"Old enough. Don't worry."

"Oh,—I'm not worrying. What's the use of worrying? Though it is her first."

Her eyes grew curious, vaguely intimate.

"Rather bad—sometimes—the first, isn't it?"

"Not always."

"She's frightened, Don't catch me having children, not in these days."

Kit stared straight ahead.

"Your sister—is it?"

"No. We live together; makes it easier, sharing one of those pigeon-holes."