Alf walked up the hill, breathing heavily and with mottled face.
The bubble of his exaltation had burst. He felt a curious sinking away within him, as though he were walking on cold damp clouds which were letting him through.
The war was changing things already, and not to his liking.
Three weeks ago who'd have talked to the Managing Director of Caspar's Syndicate like that?
Brooding on his troubles, he ran into Joe Burt who was coming swiftly round the corner of Borough Lane, brooding too.
Alf darted nimbly back. Joe stood with lowered head, glaring at his enemy. Then he thought better of it and turned on his way.
Alf, standing in the middle of the road with jeering eyes, called after him furtively.
Joe marched on unheeding to the cottage Alf had just left.
Ruth must have been awaiting him: for he entered at once without knocking.
That night as the Colonel sat on the loggia chewing his pipe, long after Mrs. Lewknor had retired, he was aware of a pillar of blackness, erect against the dull sea and star-lit sky, on the edge of the cliff, at the very spot where he had seen it on the night of the declaration of war.
Electric torch in hand, he stole out on the pair. Oblivious of all things save each other, they remained locked in each other's arms. He flashed the torch full in their faces.
"Yes, sir," his parlour-maid answered. "Me and my Joe. He come up to say goodbye. Joining up to-morrow, he is."
The Colonel mumbled something about spies, and apologised.
"No harm done, sir," laughed Anne, quietly. "It's nothing to some of them. Turn their search-light full glare on you just when you don't want, and never a by-your-leave--same as they done war-night! _If that's war_, I says to Joe, _better ha done with it afore you begin_, I says."
The Colonel retired indoors, doubly humiliated: he had made a fool of himself before his own parlour-maid, and in his mind he had gravely wronged Ruth Caspar.
Next day he started off for Old Town to find out if there was any way by which he could make amends to his own conscience and, unknown to her, to the woman he had maligned.
She met him with kind eyes, a little wistful.
"We're all friends now, sir," she said, as she shook hands. "Got to be, I reckon."