At the sound of Christie’s name she did fumble for a second with her gloved fingers upon the top of the iron gate, while her head sank down in intense thought.

“Wait a minute, Gerda!” he cried, noting this hesitation. He ran back into the hall and returned with his hat and stick. “I’ll come with you as far as their house.”

She made no objection to this; and as he shut the gate behind them, the particular feel of the ironwork and the noise of the latch brought back to his mind some occasion in the past when they had embraced each other, just there, in a rush of happy reconciliation. He glanced at the pigsty across the road. There wasn’t a hint upon the air today of anything but the spring.

“Gerda,” he said, when they were well past the street-corner, a vantage-ground that served the idlers of their quarter in lieu of a tavern-bar, “I don’t want you to think I’m a bit jealous of poor old Bob. It’s only fair you should have a friend you’re fond of, in the sort of way I’m fond of Christie.”