Opening her bag she returned the handkerchief to its depths.
"But I promised to stand by Alexander and I'm going to," she said in a low voice. "Somehow, he makes you feel that you want to stand by him."
Still Rachel said nothing.
"I must go now," Annie cried, tipping her face back, "see, it's going to storm, and I'm so afraid of lightning."
And indeed black, threatening clouds were coming up rapidly.
"I'd ask you to come and see us," she added as they fled from the square, "only the place is so horrid. You see, Alexander not only works there, but we live there, too," she continued, while they stood waiting for a car with the wind whipping their dresses about them. "Alexander has a workshop, that's all he cares for, and I have a room about three feet square; and then he has a horrid deaf and dumb creature who helps him. Oh, if I'd known he was going to have him live with us!" and her voice broke. "You've been so good to let me go on in this way," she cried, as the car stopped. "I'll tell my husband I met you. What name shall I say?"
But Rachel did not answer. She merely nodded as the other, in a tremour of fright, stepped on the car.
"You'll get caught in the rain!" Annie called after her.
Rachel smiled grimly.
The rain descended at first thin and fine as if poured through a sieve; then it increased in volume till the gutters ran yellow torrents, till the sordid brick buildings looked like drenched, warty frogs of a giant growth, till the slender trees in the squares fairly bent to the ground. But Rachel was caught in the vortex of a storm even wilder.