“I will put a candle in the window, Mrs. Winnie.”
She went and took one from the shelf, lit it, and put it upon the sill. And she was returning again toward the fire when she paused and stood listening, her head held a little to one side.
“There, do you hear it?”
Mrs. Winnie stopped her stitching and listened. This time she did hear something beyond the clapping of a bough against the wall.
“Why, yes, little lady.”
“Listen, there is the farm gate.”
She turned quickly toward the door, opened it, and stood looking out into the dusk.
Mrs. Winnie put her work aside, gave a glance through the window, smiled to herself, and then discovered that she had business in the dairy. In the dusk she had seen a man dismounting from a horse, and her husband plodding across the yard to welcome the traveller and take his nag to the stable. Mrs. Winnie was a woman of tact. She caught son William sneaking in by the back door, and took him with her to inspect the milk-pans.
Barbara stood framed in the doorway with a warm light playing about her, and the brown wainscoting, the great beams in the ceiling, and the red bricks for a background. Yet the impulse of the moment failed in her, and a shy panic took its place, so that she went and stood before the fire and turned her head away so as not to see his coming. For there was something in the intense truth that almost made her afraid, and she might have fled away to her room but for the thought that he had seen her at the door and might not understand the whim of a woman.
She heard his footsteps on the path, and when she looked he was on the threshold, wet and travel-stained, but with eyes that were very bright. He came and took her hands, but stood a little apart because of his wet clothes, and also because there was a sense of awe between them. His eyes searched her face to see whether there were any shadow of pain or sadness thereon. And now that he was so near to her, her shyness and her confusion fled, and simple love alone had utterance.