“Yes, that’s all very fine, that is!  It’s easy for you to talk like that.  But—­but—­well, I suppose there’s nothing more to be said!” She moved to one side; her anger was rising.  She knew that it was rising.  She was determined that it should rise.  She did not care.  She rather enjoyed the excitement.  She smarted under her recent experience; she was deeply miserable; and yet, at the same time, standing there close to Louis in the rustling night, she was exultant as she certainly had never been exultant before.

She walked forward grimly.  Louis turned and followed her.

“I’m most frightfully sorry,” he said.

She replied fiercely—­

“It isn’t as if I didn’t wait.  I waited in the porch I don’t know how long.  Then of course I came home, as there was no sign of you.”

“When I went back you weren’t there; it must have been while you were with old Batch; so I naturally didn’t stay.  I just came straight up here.  I was afraid you were vexed because I’d left you alone.”

“Well, and if I was!” said Rachel, splendidly contradicting herself.  “It’s not a very nice thing for a girl to be left alone like that—­and all on account of a stick!” There was a break in her voice.

Arrived at the gate, she pushed it open.

“Good-night,” she snapped.  “Please don’t come in.”

And within the gate she deliberately stared at him with an unforgiving gaze.  The impartial lamp-post lighted the scene.

“Good-night,” she repeated harshly.  She was saying to herself:  “He really does take it in the most beautiful way.  I could do anything I liked with him.”

“Good-night,” said Louis, with strict punctilio.

When she got to the top of the steps she remembered that Louis had the latch-key.  He was gone.  She gave a wet sob and impulsively ran down the steps and opened the gate.  Louis returned.  She tried to speak and could not.

“I beg your pardon,” said Louis.  “Of course you want the key.”

He handed her the key with a gesture that disconcertingly melted the rigour of all her limbs.  She snatched at it, and plunged for the gate just as the tears rolled down her cheeks in a shower.  The noise of the gate covered a fresh sob.  She did not look back.  Amid all her quite real distress she was proud and happy—­proud because she was old enough and independent enough and audacious enough to quarrel with her lover, and happy because she had suddenly discovered life.  And the soft darkness and the wind, and the faint sky reflections of distant furnace fires, and the sense of the road winding upward, and the very sense of the black mass of the house in front of her (dimly lighted at the upper floor) all made part of her mysterious happiness.

CHAPTER VIII

END AND BEGINNING

I