When the train steamed in, Edward Henry, in fear, postponed the
ultimate kiss as long as possible. He allowed Brindley to climb
before him into the second-class compartment, and purposely tarried
in finding change for the porter; and then he turned to Nellie and
stooped. She raised her white veil and raised the angelic face. They
kissed--the same false kiss--and she was withdrawing her lips ... But
suddenly she put them again to his for one second, with a hysterical,
clinging pressure. It was nothing. Nobody could have noticed it.
She herself pretended that she had not done it. Edward Henry had
to pretend not to notice it. But to him it was everything. She had
relented. She had surrendered. The sign had come from her. She wished
him to enjoy his visit to London.
He said to himself:
"Dashed if I don't write to her every day!"
He leaned out of the window as the train rolled away and waved and
smiled to her, not concealing his sentiments now; nor did she conceal
hers as she replied with exquisite pantomime to his signals. But if
the train had not been rapidly and infallibly separating them the
reconciliation could scarcely have been thus open. If for some reason
the train had backed into the station and ejected its passengers,
those two would have covered up their feelings again in an instant.
Such is human nature in the Five Towns.
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