her light hand upon his wrist. 'They will all be coming out
directly; let us get away. O, what a resounding chord! But don't
let us stop to listen to it; let us get away!'

Her hurry is over as soon as they have passed out of the Close.
They go arm-in-arm now, gravely and deliberately enough, along the
old High-street, to the Nuns' House. At the gate, the street being
within sight empty, Edwin bends down his face to Rosebud's.

She remonstrates, laughing, and is a childish schoolgirl again.

'Eddy, no! I'm too sticky to be kissed. But give me your hand,
and I'll blow a kiss into that.'

He does so. She breathes a light breath into it and asks,
retaining it and looking into it:-

'Now say, what do you see?'

'See, Rosa?'

'Why, I thought you Egyptian boys could look into a hand and see
all sorts of phantoms. Can't you see a happy Future?'

For certain, neither of them sees a happy Present, as the gate
opens and closes, and one goes in, and the other goes away.



CHAPTER IV--MR. SAPSEA