I suppose that's a sort of thing you
like--you're a woman--but I'm hanged if I do. I'd buy all my clothes
ready made if I could be sure that nobody else had worn 'em before.
Anyhow, I won't be fitted for social respectability any more often
than I can help. By Jove! What's that? Do you hear that noise? It's
at the back!"
They strained their ears; lips half parted on which the breath waited,
to listen. The sounds, muffled, were broken at moments by a subdued
chorus of men's voices.
Traill crossed the room to the door that opened into his bedroom;
unlatched it, held it wide. Sally watched his face with
half-expectant eyes.
"There's a yard at the back," he said; "my bedroom looks on to it.
Excuse me a second." He disappeared. She heard him throw up the window,
when the sounds increased in volume. Now she could distinguish
individual voices--voices taut, strained to a pitch of excitement.
Then Traill's voice, with a strange, stirring voice of vitality keyed
in it.
"Sally--here!"
It was not thinkingly said. That there had been no thought, no
premeditation, was the fact that stirred her most. In his mind she
had been Sally, and in a moment of tensity he had let it shape on
his lips.
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