She came down the road again a little after seven o'clock. It was another cold night, and the stars glittered frostily in a sky almost as black as the hills. The road lost itself in darkness before her, and the fields stretched out into a darkness that seemed illimitable, as endless as the sky. She felt herself part of the night and the cold.
For an eternity she walked up and down the road, waiting. Once she went as far as the top of the hill beyond the bridge, and saw shining against the blackness the yellow lights of his house. She looked at them for a long time. She thought that she would watch them until he came out. But she was driven to walking up and down, up and down, stumbling in the ruts of the road. At last she saw him coming, and stood still in the pool of darkness under the oaks until he reached her.
"Helen?" he said uncertainly. "Is it you?"
"Yes," she answered. Her throat ached.
"I came as quick as I could," he said. Somehow she knew that his throat ached, too. They moved to the little railing of the bridge and stood trying to see each other's faces in the gloom. "Are you cold?" he asked.
"No," she said. She saw then that the shawl had slipped from her shoulders and was dragging over one arm. The wind fluttered it, and her hands were clumsy, trying to pull it back into place.
"Here," he was taking off his coat. "No," she said again. But she let him wrap half the coat around her. They stood close together in the folds of it. The chilly wind flowed around them like water, and the warmth of their trembling bodies made a little island of cosiness in a sea of cold.
"I got to go," he said. "It's a good job. Fifty dollars a month. I got to support mother, you know. Her money's pretty nearly gone already, and she spent a lot putting me through school. I just got to go. I wish—I wish I didn't have to."
She tried to hold her lips steady.
"It's all right," she said. "I'm glad you got a good job."