Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 7.pdf/281

 Hardly had she gone six paces when he was at her side again.

"I say," he said with a fearful sense of his temerity and raising his mortar-board awkwardly as though he was passing a funeral. "But that sheet of paper"

"Yes," she said, surprised—quite naturally.

"May I have it?"

"Why?"

He felt a breathless pleasure, like that of sliding down a slope of snow. "I would like to have it."

She smiled and raised her eyebrows, but his excitement was now too great for smiling. "Look here!" she said, and displayed the sheet crumpled into a ball. She laughed—with a touch of effort.

"I don't mind that," said Mr. Lewisham laughing too. He captured the paper by an insistent gesture and smoothed it out with fingers that trembled.

"You don't mind?" he said.

"Mind what?"

"If I keep it?"

"Why should I?"

Pause. Their eyes met again. There was an odd constraint about both of them, a palpitating interval of silence.

"I really must be going," she said suddenly, breaking the spell by an effort. She turned about and left him with the crumpled piece of paper in the fist that held the book, the other hand once more lifting the mortar-board in a dignified salute.

He watched her receding figure. His heart was beating with remarkable rapidity. How light, how