She came back a few steps, and he met her in the middle of the veranda. In one of her swift transitions of mood a humorous element in the situation seemed to appeal to her, and she said with a laugh:—'It's comical, isn't it? The two tragedies, black and white—we two here—those two out there!'
Just then the black curtain of cloud, that had been rising slowly and obscuring the stars, was torn by a strong flash of chain lightning. It threw up her face in startling clearness and he saw, in strange blend with the conflicting emotions upon it, the wraith of her old whimsical smile.
He did not answer her laugh. In truth, the man's nature was stirred to a more deep-reaching extent perhaps than ever in his life before. It may have been the flash of lightning recalling a momentary flash of illumination that had once shone upon his own soul.
That had been when he was kneeling by the bedside of his dying wife, and her last words revealed to him a magnanimity of devotion for which he had been wholly unprepared. He had thought her merely amiable and stupid—except in her love for him—and his sentiments towards her had been a mixture of boredom, and the tolerant consideration due to the bestower of substantial benefits. Nevertheless, she had awakened, during a spasm of remorseful self-abasement, some nobler quality latent in the man.
And now—as that flash of lightning illuminated Bridget's face and made him keenly sensitive to the charm of her personality—her wayward fascination, her inconsistencies, her weakness, her temperamental craving for dramatic contrast, her reckless toying with emotion—by a curious law of paradox, there came back upon Willoughby Maule that scene with his dying wife, and he had again the flashing perception of something sacred, unexplainable, to which his own nature could not reach.
It sobered him. He had had the impulse to snatch her to his breast, to seal the half-compact with a lover's kiss, so passionate that the memory of it must for ever bind her to him.
But the impulse was past. They stood perfectly silent, stiff, in the interval—it seemed a very long one—between the lightning flash, and the distant reverberation of thunder which followed it.
Then he said mechanically, like one walking out of a dream? 'There's going to be a storm. Are you frightened?'
'No,' she answered. 'I'm never frightened of storms!' and added, 'besides, Colin would be so glad of rain.'
Before he could reply, she had glided away again and he was alone.