But the girl made no move. With parted lips she swayed towards him, while he watched her, with the veins standing out on his forehead. "Billy--I don't care; I'm mad, too!" The scent she used was mounting to his brain--the nearness of her was driving him mad.
"Molly, get back to that ballroom; get back quick, or----" He spoke through his clenched teeth.
"Or what, Billy boy?" She smiled deliciously.
And then he kissed her: a kiss that seemed to draw her soul to her lips: a kiss that lifted him until he travelled through endless spaces in a great aching void where time and distance ceased, and nothing happened save a wonderful ecstasy, and ever and anon the mighty booming of a giant drum.
He seemed to be treading on air, and though the ballroom had vanished, and the discreet apartment with shaded lights had faded away, yet he was very conscious of the nearness of his girl. But just now, he could not see her--she eluded him, leaving an ever-present feeling that she would be waiting for him round the next of those intangible masses he seemed to be drifting through.
"You don't mind waiting, my princess?" he murmured ceaselessly. "After this war it will all come right. Just now I've got to go--I must go out there; but afterwards, it will all come right--and we'll live in a house in the country and grow cabbages and pigs. You'll wait, you say? Ah! my dear, my dear; it's sweet of you; but perhaps you ought to have married the lawyer man. You might have been Mrs. Prime Minister one of these days."
For a while the tired brain refused to act; the man felt himself falling into unplumbed depths--depths which echoed with monstrous reverberations.
"Molly, where are you, dear? It's cold, and my head is throbbing to beat the band. If only that cursed drum would stop! Do you hear it echoing through the air? And the noise hurts--hurts like hell, Molly. Ah! Heaven, but it's cold; and I can't see you, my lady; I don't know where you are."
Once again he became conscious of figures moving around him. They seemed to be carrying motionless men past his feet--men on stretchers covered with blankets. With staring eyes he watched the proceeding, trying to understand what was happening. In front of him was a window in which the glass had been smashed, leaving great jagged pieces sticking out from the sides of the frame. He wondered vaguely why it had been left in such a dangerous condition; when he and Molly had their house such a thing would never be allowed to happen--if it did it would be mended at once. He asked one of the passing figures what had caused the damage, and when he got no answer he angrily repeated the question.