The decision wasn't due to common sense, but to a wish not to dissipate his rage on people that didn't matter. He wanted it intact for Rose.
He went back into the alley, braced himself in the angle of a brick pier and waited. He neither stamped his feet nor flailed his arms about to drive off the cold. He just stood still with the patience of his immemorial ancestor, waiting. Unconscious of the lapse of time, unconscious of the figures that presently began straggling out of the narrow door, that were not she.
Presently she came. A buffet of wind struck her as she closed the door behind her, and whipped her unbuttoned ulster about, but she did not cower under it, nor turn away—stood there finely erect, confronting it. There was something alert about her pose—he couldn't clearly see her face—that suggested she was expecting somebody. And then, not loud, but very distinctly:
"Roddy," she said.
He tried to speak her name, but his dry throat denied it utterance. He began suddenly to tremble. He came forward out of the shadow and she saw him and came to meet him, and spoke his name again.
"I saw you when you went out," she said. "I was afraid you mightn't wait. I hurried as fast as I could. I've—w-waited so long. Longer than you."
They were so near together now, that she became aware how he was trembling—shuddering fairly.
"You're c-cold," she said.
He managed at last to speak, and as he did so, reached out and took her by the shoulders. "Come home," he said. "You must come home."
At that she stepped back and shook her head. But he had discovered while his hands held her, that she was trembling, too.