“That will carry it off.”
“Sometimes I don’t mind storms. I don’t to-day.”
They held their places at the window, watching the pale lightning light the rain, hearing the thunder follow more swiftly. Presently a blinding white fire and a splintering crash just above their heads made them both exclaim.
As the thunder rolled bumping and snarling away across the sky they saw the figure of a man appear from the darkness beyond the candle and stand pressed close to the window with arms upstretched and laid against the panes. Through the sheets of rain his face was not quite clear. But he was dark and pale and tall and shouting at the storm. So he lived there alone. The storm was a companion. He was alone and aware. Had he seen the new people across the way?
A brilliant flash lit up the white face and its frame of heavy hair. The dark eyes were looking straight across.
Sayce: and he lived here. Miriam drew back and sat down on the end of her bed. This queer alley was then the place in all London in which to live. He had found it for himself. Was he dismayed at the sight of philistines invading the retreat where he lived hidden amongst unseeing villagers? She vowed not again to look across when there was any sign of his presence. He should be invaded without knowing it. She would see him go in and out, see without seeing: screening him even from her own observation. And all the time his presence would cast its light upon their frontage.
“The strange room,” said Miss Holland, who also had left the window, “has a tenant as eccentric as itself.”
“Do you know who it is?” Miriam stole back to the window to learn the disposition of the door of his house. He had disappeared. It was a side door, next to the cobbler’s window, like theirs next to the stonemason’s.
“It is Sayce. E. W. Sayce ... the poet.”
“Indeed?” exclaimed Miss Holland delightedly. “A poet. That is charming. Quite enchanting to feel that poetry is being written so near at hand.”