I could not speak, something was in my throat, but I obeyed him. We ran till we reached the abbey, where it stood in the great open space of its own graveyard, and there we drew aside under the shadow of the eastern buttress, protected a little by the projecting arch.
"You're wet through," said he, laying his hand upon my arm.
I laughed again, not in the sort of exultant way I had laughed when he had asked me if I was afraid of lightning, but in a low, foolish kind of fashion.
"It won't hurt me," murmured I. "Nothing hurts me. I'm so strong."
"Oh yes, you're the right sort, I know," said he; "but all the same, you ought to have stayed at 'The Elms' till it was over. If I had been there I should have made you stay."
How angry those words would have made me a week ago! But now they thrilled me with delight, and with that same tender fear and longing of fresh experience that had haunted me ever since the night upon the garden cliff. Could he really have "made" me do anything?
"I shouldn't have stopped," I said; "no, not for any one. I'm not afraid of a storm." But I think there was very little of my old defiance in the tone. He laughed gently, and I added, "I don't see any use in waiting here."
I advanced forward into the open, but as I did so a fresh flash rent the clouds and illumined the ground all about us, revealing darkest corners in its searching light. He took me by the hand and drew me once more into the shadow—not only into the shadow of the buttress this time, but of the ruined roof of a transept, where only the lightning could have discovered us.
"Not yet," he said, gently; and although there was no need for it, he still held my hand in his.