Free Grey Mask by Patricia Wentworth

an old shop in Chelsea; he had given it to her on her nineteenth birthday, a month before they became engaged. The hands pointed to a quarter to seven.
    He said, “Well? You’re coming?” and saw the colour come into her face.
    She laughed unexpectedly and picked up the clock. He watched with surprise and amusement. What was she going to do?
    What she did was to open the clock and turn the hands. They went round with a little whirr; she was turning them backwards—once—twice—three—four—five times; and as they turned, she became the glowing, young, live Margaret of that nineteenth birthday.
    “What are you doing?” asked Charles smiling.
    “I’m putting back the clock five years,” said Margaret. There was a shade of defiance in her tone. Five years took them back to the days before what Charles had called the “episode”; it took them back to the time when they were just neighbours and friends, seeing one another every day, full of common interest, engagements, diversions, quarrels.
    Charles lifted his eyebrows.
    “Five years?”
    She nodded.
    “Yes, five. Is it a bargain?”
    “Go and dress,” he said.
    Charles made himself very agreeable over dinner. Incidentally he began to learn something of Margaret’s life during the past four years. To his surprise he found that she had been working during the whole of the time, though she had gone on living in George Street until her mother’s death.
    “Freddy was very anxious I shouldn’t think you had quarrelled with him.” He laughed. “How would one set about quarrelling with Freddy? Has anyone ever done it?”
    “I shouldn’t think so.”
    “You didn’t?”
    “My dear Charles!”
    “No—but did you?”
    “Would it be your business if I had?”
    Charles considered.
    “You’re not playing the game. This is five years ago and I am thinking of asking you to marry me. Yes, I think it’s my business, because you see, if a girl has quarrelled with her step-father and left home, one might want to know why before one took the fatal plunge.”
    Margaret put down her left hand and clenched it on the sharp edges of the chair on which she sat. Just for a moment all the lights in the long room seemed to swing, and the room itself was full of a grey mist. She looked steadily into the mist until it lifted and showed her Charles leaning towards her across the table with his charming malicious smile.
    “Are you playing the game? You can’t have it both ways, you know. If it’s now, it’s not your business; and if it’s five years ago”—her voice broke in a sudden laugh—“why, if it’s five years ago, I haven’t left home at all.”
    “Your trick!” said Charles. But he had seen her colour go, and just for one horrid moment he had thought that she might be going faint.
    After dinner they danced in the famous Gold Room. Margaret was a beautiful dancer, and for a time they did not talk at all. Perhaps they were both remembering the last time they had danced together, a week before the wedding day which had never come.
    Charles broke the silence. Memories are too dangerous sometimes.
    “All the old tunes are as dead as door-nails. I don’t know the name of anything. Do you?”
    “The last one,” said Margaret, “is called I don’t mind being all alone when I’m all alone with you.”
    “And this one?”
    They were close to the orchestra, and a young man with a piercing tenor uplifted his voice and sang through his nose: “Oh, baby! Don’t we get along?”
    “Ripping!” said Charles. “I like the way these fellows burst into song.”
    “I’m happy! You’re happy!” sang the young man in the band.
    “In fact,” said Charles, “the libretto has been specially written for us. I must thank the management. You wouldn’t like to come with me, I suppose?”
    Margaret laughed.
    “No, I wouldn’t. And you needn’t think you can get a rise out of me by saying things like that, because you can’t.”
    “Sure?”
    “Quite