ANGEL     PAVEMENT
screen was nothing compared with the pulsating real life
of those contacts in die warm gloom, those little pressures
and squeezes that were signals from that other en-
chanted world. He did not try to talk to her again.
That would come later. He said nothing, hardly looked
her way, afraid lest he should break the spell.
When the film ended and a kind of soft russet dawn
broke as the screen disappeared behind the curtains,
they moved away from one another, and he did not even
catch a glimpse of her face. A great many people went
and, and a great many others came in, but they were not
disturbed. Then the curtains moved again; a soft russet
twilight came, only to fade into darkness; and the pro-
gramme artfully continued. But would this other and
far more exciting programme continue? His heart
bounded in the new darkness. He leaned towards her
again; she did not evade him; and hand clasped hand
again, stickily perhaps now but still exquisitely, thrill-
ingly. Turgis had not been so happy for months.
It was not until the young inventor's train to New
York was again roaring across the screen, after the pro-
gramme had gone round its full circle, that the girl
loosened her hand and began to put on her gloves.
Turgis had been waiting for this moment for some time.
When she rose, he rose too; and she followed him past
the indignant knees and up the stairs. It was when they
reached the exit steps, descending into the real world,
that he turned and spoke to her. And he knew instinc-
tively that they were not now the two people who had
been holding hands for so long in the darkness inside;
those two intimates were ghosts now; these two on the
steps, in the light, were strangers and would have to
.begin over again. When he spoke he acted upon this