"I hope you've not been waiting long?"
George's heart was thundering against his ribs. He could scarcely
speak. He contrived to emit a No.
"I didn't think at first I could get away. I had to . . ." She
broke off with a cry. The rat, fond of exercise like all rats, had
made another of its excitable sprints across the floor.
A hand clutched nervously at George's arm, found it and held it.
And at the touch the last small fragment of George's self-control
fled from him. The world became vague and unreal. There remained
of it but one solid fact--the fact that Maud was in his arms and
that he was saying a number of things very rapidly in a voice that
seemed to belong to somebody he had never met before.