And as it stood still there came a light tapping on the pane. He thought that it was Winny, that she had run after him with some message, or that perhaps somebody else had run to tell him that something was wrong.
He went to the door; and as he went the tapping began again, louder, faster, a nervous, desperate appeal.
He opened the door, and the lamplight showed them to each other.
"Good God!" He muttered it. "What are you doing here?"
It was his instinct, not his eyes that knew her.
She had not come forward as the door opened; she had swerved and stepped back rather, gripping her skirts tighter round her as she cowered. Sleeked by the rain, supple, sinuous, and shivering, she cowered like a beaten bitch.
Yet she faced him. Shrinking from him, cowering like a bitch, backing to the edge of the porch where the rain beat her, she faced him for a moment.
Then she crept to him cowering; and as she cowered, her hands, as if in helplessness and fear, let fall the skirts they had gathered from the rain. Her eyes, as she came, gazed strangely at him; eyes that cowered, bitchlike, imploring, agonized, desirous.
She crept to the very threshold.
"Let me in," she said. "You will, won't you?"