While he was in the inner room, opening and closing his wardrobe, and changing his wet coat for a dry one, he kept on talking. Mrs. Quayle was a good creature who had lost her husband in that January gale a few years ago. She would take Bessie in—he was sure she would. But this was only to drown the clamour of two voices within himself, one of which was saying, "Must you go?" and the other "Certainly you must! Be a man and play the game, for God's sake."
When he returned to the sitting-room the breath was almost smitten out of his body by what he saw. Bessie had taken off her blouse, and was kneeling by the fire to dry it. She did not raise her eyes to his, and after a first glance he did not look at her. Opening the outer door to the landing, where the hat-rail stood, he pulled on a cap and dragged on an ulster, saying, in a nervous voice,
"It's only a hop-skip-and-a-jump to Mrs. Quayle's. I shall be back presently."
Suddenly there came a flash of lightning which lit up the dark bedroom, and then a clap of thunder, loud and long, which rattled the window frames.
"It would be foolish to go out in a storm like that, wouldn't it?" he said.
"'Deed it would," said Bessie. She had risen with a start, but now she knelt again and held her steaming blouse before the fire.
Stowell took off his cap and ulster and dropped them on to a chair. Then he walked about the room, trying to keep his eyes from the girl, and to fill the difficult silence by talking on indifferent subjects—other storms he had seen in other countries.
After a while the thunder went off in the direction of Ireland, its echo becoming fainter and fainter in the sonority of the sea.
"It's gone—now I can go," he said.
But hardly had he taken up his cap again when the rain, which had ceased for a moment, came in a sudden torrent.