She closed the door behind her and, walking to the top of the steps, paused there and looked up and down the street.

Bill Gregg groaned, snatched his hat and plunged through the door, and Ronicky heard the brief thunder of his feet down the first flight of stairs, then the heavy thumps, as he raced around the landing.  He was able to trace him down all the three flights of steps to the bottom.

And so swift was that descent that, when the girl, idling down the steps across the street, came onto the sidewalk, Bill Gregg rushed out from the other side and ran toward her.

They made a strange picture as they came to a halt at the same instant, the girl shrinking back in apparent fear of the man, and Bill Gregg stopping by that same show of fear, as though by a blow in the face.  There was such a contrast between the two figures that Ronicky Doone might have laughed, had he not been shaking his head with sympathy for Bill Gregg.

For never had the miner seemed so clumsily big and gaunt, never had his clothes seemed so unpressed and shapeless, while his soft gray hat, to which he still clung religiously, appeared hopelessly out of place in contrast with the slim prettiness of the girl.  She wore a black straw hat, turned back from her face, with a single big red flower at the side of it; her dress was a tailored gray tweed.  The same distinction between their clothes was in their faces, the finely modeled prettiness of her features and the big, careless chiseling of the features of Bill Gregg.

Ronicky Doone did not wonder that, after her first fear, her gesture was one of disdain and surprise.

Bill Gregg had dragged the hat from his head, and the wind lifted his long black hair and made it wild.  He went a long, slow step closer to her, with both his hands outstretched.

A strange scene for a street, and Ronicky Doone saw the girl flash a glance over her shoulder and back to the house from which she had just come.  Ronicky Doone followed that glance, and he saw, all hidden save the profile of the face, a man standing at an opposite window and smiling scornfully down at that picture in the street.

What a face it was!  Never in his life had Ronicky Doone seen a man who, in one instant, filled him with such fear and hatred, such loathing and such dread, such scorn and such terror.  The nose was hooked like the nose of a bird of prey; the eyes were long and slanting like those of an Oriental.  The face was thin, almost fleshless, so that the bony jaw stood out like the jaw of a death’s-head.

As for the girl, the sight of that onlooker seemed to fill her with a new terror.  She shrank back from Bill Gregg until her shoulders were almost pressed against the wall of the house.  And Ronicky saw her head shake, as she denied Bill the right of advancing farther.  Still he pleaded, and still she ordered him away.  Finally Bill Gregg drew himself up and bowed to her and turned on his heel.