flame. It was a long night: a spacious night, with room in it for more memories of Edgar than she had known herself mistress of.
Edgar, truculent schoolboy; Edgar at Oxford, superior to the point of the intolerable; Edgar journalist, novelist, war correspondent—always friend; Edgar going to America to lecture, and make the fortune that—he said—would make all things possible. He had said that on the last evening, when a lot of them—boys and girls, journalists, musicians, art students—had gone to see him off at Euston. He had said it at the instant of farewell, and had looked a question. Had she said “Yes”—or only thought it? She had often wondered that, even when her brain was clear.
Then—she pushed away the next thought with both hands, and drove herself back to the day when the schoolboy next door whom she had admired and hated, saved her pet kitten from the butcher’s dog—an heroic episode with blood in it and tears. Edgar’s voice, the touch of his hand, the swing of his waltz-step—the way his eyes smiled before his mouth did. How bright his eyes were—and his hands were very strong. He was strong every way: he would fight for his
