He put his face down under the tent of her umbrella and gazed at her with menacing eyes and tight lips. In the light of the window and against the inky blackness around them the two faces were distinct as cameos hung on a velvet background. He saw the whiteness of her chin on the bow beneath it, and her mouth, with the lips that all the anger in the world could not make hard or unlovely.
“You’ve got to listen to me,” he said, shaking her arm as if trying to shake some passion into the set antagonism of her face; “you’ve got to be my wife.”
She suddenly seized her umbrella and, turning it toward him, pressed it down between them. The action was so quick and unexpected that the man did not move back, and the ferrule striking him on the cheek, furrowed a long scratch on the smooth skin. A drop of blood rose to the surface.
With an oath he seized the umbrella and, tearing it from her grasp, sent it flying into the street. Here the wind snatched it, and its inverted shape, like a large black mushroom, went sweeping forward, tilted and already half full of water, before the angry gusts.
Essex tried to keep his own over her, still retaining his hold on her arm.
“Come, be reasonable,” he said; “there’s no use angering me for nothing. This is a wet place for lovers to have meetings. Give me my answer, and I swear I’ll not detain you. When will you marry me?”
“What’s the good of talking that way? You know perfectly what I’ll say. It will always be the same.”
“I’m not so sure of that. I’ve got something to say that may make you change your mind.”
He pushed the umbrella back that the light might fall directly on her. It fell on him also. She saw his face under the brim of his soaked hat, shining with rain, pallidly sinister, the trickle of blood on one cheek.
“Nothing that you can say will ever make me change my mind. Mr. Essex, I am wet and tired; won’t you, please, let me go?”