The copper coloured clouds were massed above and about them, the trees bent and straightened and bent again before the wind, the sea heaved in huge unbroken waves right to the horizon; Lundy Island, Hartland, and Baggy Point had disappeared in a driving sheet of rain.
How beautiful she looked as she stood in the storm, cut, bruised and dishevelled.
Just for one moment she looked into the eyes of the man she loved, whose hands were outstretched for the treasures she could not lay therein; and then she turned and fled as a great streak of lightning rent the clouds, and thunder like heavy artillery crashed about their heads.
She had not gone twenty yards when she stumbled and fell heavily.
Her boots were being hurled here and there by the waves in the cove where she had left them; her left foot was cut and bleeding badly, but a sudden desperate courage came to her when she felt herself raised and steadied.
"I shall carry you to the foot of the hill near your cottage!"
She struggled as he lifted her, struggled so violently that he put her on her feet.
"Don't touch me, Jan, don't come near me, because I—because——"
And the mantle of his satisfaction and content being suddenly rent into a thousand shreds by the knife edge of his intuition, he put both hands on her shoulders, looked down into the misery of her eyes, and very gently said one word.
"Because?"