that I've promised to marry four different men, I bet he'll have me
home by the first train.'

She stopped. She had more to say, but she could not say it. She stood
looking at him. And he looked at her. His face was grey and his mouth
oddly twisted. Silence seemed to fall on the whole universe.

Sally was really afraid now, and she knew it. She was feeling very
small and defenceless in an extremely alarming world. She could not
have said what it was that had happened to her. She only knew that life
had become of a sudden very vivid, and that her ideas as to what was
amusing had undergone a striking change. A man's development is a slow
and steady process of the years--a woman's a thing of an instant. In
the silence which followed her words Sally had grown up.

Tom broke the silence.

'Is that true?' he said.

His voice made her start. He had spoken quietly, but there was a new
note in it, strange to her. Just as she could not have said what it was
that had happened to her, so now she could not have said what had
happened to Tom. He, too, had changed, but how she did not know. Yet
the explanation was simple. He also had, in a sense, grown up. He was
no longer afraid of her.

He stood thinking. Hours seemed to pass.

'Come along!' he said, at last, and he began to move off down the road.