They led the way to the portico, where Godwin stood with them and watched the squall.  A moment’s downpour of furious rain was followed by heavy hailstones, which drove horizontally before the shrieking wind.  The prospect had wrapped itself in grey gloom.  At a hundred yards’ distance, scarcely an object could be distinguished; the storm-cloud swooped so low that its skirts touched the branches of tall elms, a streaming, rushing raggedness.

‘Don’t you enjoy that?’ Fanny asked of Godwin.

‘Indeed I do.’

‘You should be on Dartmoor in such weather,’ said Sidwell.  ’Father and I were once caught in storms far worse than this—­far better, I ought to say, for I never knew anything so terrifically grand.’

Already it was over.  The gusts diminished in frequency and force, the hail ceased, the core of blackness was passing over to the eastern sky.  Fanny ran out into the garden, and pointed upward.

‘Look where the sunlight is coming!’

An uncloaked patch of heaven shone with colour like that of the girl’s eyes—­faint, limpid blue.  Reminding himself that to tarry longer in this company would be imprudent, Godwin bade the sisters good-morning.  The frank heartiness with which Fanny pressed his hand sent him on his way exultant.  Not too strong a word; for, independently of his wider ambitions, he was moved and gratified by the thought that kindly feeling towards him had sprung up in such a heart as this.  Nor did conscience so much as whisper a reproach.  With unreflecting ingenuousness he tasted the joy as if it were his right.  Thus long he had waited, through years of hungry manhood, for the look, the tone, which were in harmony with his native sensibilities.  Fanny Warricombe was but an undeveloped girl, yet he valued her friendship above the passionate attachment of any woman bred on a lower social plane.  Had it been possible, he would have kissed her fingers with purest reverence.

When out of sight of the house, he paused to regard the sky again.  Its noontide splendour was dazzling; masses of rosy cloud sailed swiftly from horizon to horizon, the azure deepening about them.  Yet before long the west would again send forth its turbulent spirits, and so the girls might perhaps be led to think of him.

By night the weather grew more tranquil.  There was a full moon, and its radiance illumined the ever-changing face of heaven with rare grandeur.  Godwin could not shut himself up over his books; he wandered far away into the country, and let his thoughts have freedom.

He was learning to review with calmness the course by which he had reached his now steadfast resolve.  A revulsion such as he had experienced after his first day of simulated orthodoxy, half a year ago, could not be of lasting effect, for it was opposed to the whole tenor of his mature thought.  It spoilt his holiday, but had no chance of persisting after his return to the atmosphere of Rotherhithe.