Anderson fetched a chair from his office, but she thanked him and said that she preferred standing.
“I thought I had time to get to Madame Griggs's on the other side of the street,” said she, “but all at once it came down.”
Anderson felt her ungraciousness, but she herself did not seem to realize it at all. Presently she gave a little sidewise smile at him, and comprehended in the smile the old clerk and the boy who hovered near.
“It is a fine shower,” said she, with a kind of confidential glee. As she spoke she looked out at the snarl of rain shot with lances of electric fire, and there was a curious elation, almost like intoxication, in her expression. She was in a fine spiritual excitement.
“Yes,” said Anderson. “We needed rain.”
Just then the world seemed swimming in blue light and there was a terrific crash. Anderson, who never thought of any personal fear in a tempest, looked rather apprehensively at the girl. He recalled his mother's fear of draughts.
“Perhaps you had better move back a little; that was quite near,” he said. Somehow the little fears and precautions which he scorned for himself seemed to apply quite reasonably to this little, tender, pretty creature with the lightning playing around her and the thunder breaking over her defenceless head.
Charlotte laughed. “Oh, I am not afraid,” said she. Then she added, quite innocently, with more of personal appeal than she had ever used towards him, “Are you?”
“No,” said Anderson.
“I like it,” said she, staring out at the swaying, brandishing maples, and the street which ran like a river, with now and then a boiling pool.