The wind blew, and she felt rain on her cheek. Clayhanger advised her to stand against the other wall of the porch for better protection. She obeyed. He re-entered the porch, but was still exposed to the rain. She called him to her side. Already he was so close that she could have touched his shoulder by outstretching her arm.
"Oh! I'm all right!" he said lightly, and did not move.
"You needn't be afraid of me!" She was hurt that he had refused her invitation to approach her. The next instant she would have given her tongue not to have uttered those words. But she was in such a tingling state of extreme sensitiveness as rendered it impossible for her to exercise a normal self-control.
Scarcely conscious of what she did, she asked him the time. He struck a match to look at his watch. The wind blew the match out, but she saw his wistful face, with his disordered hair under the hat. It had the quality of a vision.
He offered to get a light in the house, but abruptly she said good night.
Then they were shaking hands--she knew not how or why. She could not loose his hand. She thought: "Never have I held a hand so honest as this hand." At last she dropped it. They stood silent while a trap rattled up Trafalgar Road. It was as if she was bound to remain moveless until the sounds of the trap had died away.
She walked proudly out into the rain. He called to her: "I say, Miss Lessways!" But she did not stop.
In a minute she was back again in Lane End House.
"That you?" Tom's voice from the breakfast-room!
"Yes," she answered clearly. "I've put the chain on. Good night."