"The garden wall should be here," he said. "Empty house. Take shelter in it. Yes." He groped, and met with resistance. "Here it is."
They stumbled slowly along beside a wall. "Lot of nettles, I'm afraid. Sorry, but can't be helped," as they plunged into a grove of them. "Here we are."
His hand was on an iron gate which gave and opened inwards. She felt a house rising close above them. Roger relinquished her, with many injunctions to stand still, and she heard his steps going away along a flagged path.
Annette was not country-bred, and she had not that vague confidence in her mother earth which those who have played on her surface from childhood never lose in later life. She was alarmed to find herself alone, and she shivered a little in the dripping winding-sheet of the mist. She looked round her and then up. High in heaven a pale disk showed for a moment and was blotted out. The sun!—it was shining somewhere. And far away, in some other world, she heard a lark singing, singing, as it soared in the blue.
A key in a lock turned, and a door close at hand grated on its hinges.
"Wait till I light a match," said Roger's welcome voice.
The match made a tawny blur the shape of a doorway, and she had time to reach it before it flickered out.
Roger drew her into the house, and closed the door.