"Don't be angry with me," she pouted demurely.

He gathered her into his arms and kissed her.

"I wish it were the custom," she said in a faint voice, from the midst of
the embrace, "because then I'd have to marry you, Ned dear . . . wouldn't
I?"



JUST MEAT

He strolled to the corner and glanced up and down the intersecting street,
but saw nothing save the oases of light shed by the street lamps at the
successive crossings. Then he strolled back the way he had come. He was a
shadow of a man, sliding noiselessly and without undue movement through the
semi-darkness. Also he was very alert, like a wild animal in the jungle,
keenly perceptive and receptive. The movement of another in the darkness
about him would need to have been more shadowy than he to have escaped him.

In addition to the running advertisement of the state of affairs carried to
him by his senses, he had a subtler perception, a FEEL, of the atmosphere
around him. He knew that the house in front of which he paused for a
moment, contained children. Yet by no willed effort of perception did he
have this knowledge. For that matter, he was not even aware that he knew,
so occult was the impression. Yet, did a moment arise in which action, in
relation to that house, were imperative, he would have acted on the
assumption that it contained children. He was not aware of all that he
knew about the neighbourhood.