He knew that voice. He turned round sharply. Clare!
Never did he forget the look of her at that moment. He thought afterwards (though it could not have been more than imagination) that as she spoke the downfalling rain increased to a torrent; he saw her cheeks, pink and shining, and the water glistening on the edges of her hair. She wore a long mackintosh that reached almost to her heels, and a sou'wester pulled over her ears and forehead. But the poise of her as she stood, so exquisitely serene with the rain beating down upon her, struck some secret chord in his being which till that moment had been dumb.
He dropped the sacks into a pool of water and stared at her in wistful astonishment.
"You've dropped your things," she said.
He was staring at her so intently that he seemed hardly to comprehend her words. The chord in him that had been struck hurt curiously, like a muscle long unused. When at last his eyes fell to the sopping bundle at his feet he just shrugged his shoulders and muttered: "Oh, they don't matter. I'll leave them." Then, recollecting that he had not yet given her any greeting, he made some conventional remark about the weather.
Then she made another conventional remark about the weather.
Then he said, curiously: "We don't see so much of each other nowadays, do we?"
To which she replied: "No. I wonder why? Are they overworking you?"
"Not that," he answered.
"Then I won't guess any other reasons."