Read "The Truants" by A.E.W. Mason online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
They walked for a while in silence, side by side, yet not so close but that there was an interval between them. Millie every now and then glanced at Tony's face, but she saw only his profile, and with only the glimmer of the starlight to serve her for a reading-lamp, she could guess nothing of his expression. But he walked like a man utterly dispirited and tired. The hopes, so stoutly cherished during the last few years, had all crumbled away to-night. Perpetually his thoughts recurred to that question, which now never could be answered -- if he had gone into the house in Berkeley Square on that distant evening when he had been contented to pace for a little while beneath the windows, would he have averted the trouble which had reached its crisis to-night at the _Reserve?_ He thought not -- he was not sure; only he was certain that he should have gone in. He stopped and turned back, looking towards the _Reserve_.
A semicircle of lights over the doorway was visible, and as he looked those lights were suddenly extinguished. He heard Millie's voice at his side.