In the limousine scarcely a word was spoken. Maggie leaned back in her
seat, her face dazed and expressionless. Opposite to her, Nigel sat with
set, grim face, looking with fixed stare out of the window at the
deserted streets. Of the three, Naida seemed more on the point of giving
way to emotion. They had passed Hyde Park Corner, however, before a word
was spoken. Then it was she who broke the silence.
"Where do we go to first?" she demanded.
"To the Milan Court," Nigel replied.
"You are taking me home first, then?"
"Yes!"
She was silent for a moment. Then she leaned forward and touched the
window.
"Pull that down, please," she directed. "I am stifling."
He obeyed, and the rush of cold, wet air had a curiously quietening
effect upon the nerves of all of them. Raindrops hung from the leaves of
the lime trees and still glittered upon the windowpane. On the way
towards the river, the masses of cloud were tinged with purple, and
faintly burning stars shone out of unexpectedly clear patches of sky.
The night of storm was over, but the wind, dying away before the dawn,
seemed to bring with it all the sweetness of the cleansed places, to be
redolent even of the budding trees and shrubs,--the lilac bushes,
drooping with their weight of moisture, and the pink and white chestnut
blossoms, dashed to pieces by the rain but yielding up their lives with
sweetness. The streets, in that single hour between the hurrying
homewards of the belated reveller and the stolid tramp of the early
worker, were curiously empty and seemed to gain in their loneliness a
new dignity.
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