She had found Barnabas leaning against the porch outside; he had heard or felt her approach, and turned the moment she had joined him. Voices from the inn had assailed their ears, in a gust of sound with the opening of the door; and then they had been alone, wrapped in the sweet solemn night, and Meg's anger and shame had died. After all, they two were pilgrims together, through a tumultuous and alien world, and she had been foolish to have been so disturbed. It had always been wonderfully easy to Meg to look at things from a purely spiritual point of view.
"Are you going out again?" she had asked him; and he had answered, with some constraint, that he was going to catch the lads coming out of the factory in the town, pointing to where the lights of Nottingham twinkled in the distance.
"Then I'll come too," Meg had said. "I can start the singing if you want it; and I always like to hear you speak."
But, for the first time since she had known him, he had refused her companionship, speaking still with the same constrained tone, and without looking at her.
"Ye are just killing yourself, lass; I canna let you do that."
The girl had evinced much the same half-reproachful wonder that she had shown when he had objected to the cutting off of her hair.
"If I am of any service at all," she had said, "you, of all men, should not try to stop me." And at that, the man had stood upright with a laugh and a quick passionate gesture, as if he would have stretched out his arms to her.
"I, of all men! I, of all men!" he had cried. "Lass, do ye suppose I am no' of flesh and blood, like the others? The Lord has angels enough; let me ha' the woman by my side; I of all men shouldna stay ye. Come then an' ye want to, Margaret!" And Meg, aghast, had stood for one moment with frightened eyes; then had turned and fled.
He had wakened her with a rough shock, and had brought her back to an earth that was no longer only "the road to Heaven".
It was a natural thing enough that had befallen the strange pair; only Meg, with her eyes fixed on the stars, had never dreamed of its possibility, and her heart had sunk.