the field to Anne's shelter at the bottom. He pushed back
the sliding door.

The rain drummed on the roof and went hissing along the soaked ground;
it sprayed out as the grass bent and parted under it; every hollow tuft
was a water spout. The fields were dim behind the shining, glassy bead
curtain of the rain.

The wind rose again and shook the rain curtain and blew it into the
shelter. Rain scudded across the floor, wetting them where they stood.
Jerrold slid the door to. They were safe now from the downpour.

Anne's bed stood in the corner tucked up in its grey blankets. They sat
down on it side by side.

For a moment they were silent, held by their memory. They were shut in
there with their past. It came up to them, close and living, out of the
bright, alien mystery of the rain.

He put his hand on the shoulder of Anne's coat to feel if it was wet. At
his touch she trembled.

"It hasn't gone through, has it?"

"No," she said and coughed again.

"Anne, I hate that cough of yours. You never had a cough before."

"I've never had pleurisy before."

"You wouldn't have had it if you hadn't been frightfully run down."

"It's all over now," she said.

"It isn't. You may get it again. I don't feel as if you were safe for
one minute. Are you warm?"

"Quite."

"Are your feet wet?"

"No. No. No. Don't worry, Jerry dear; I'm all right."

"I wouldn't worry if I was with you all the time. It's not seeing you.
Not knowing."

"Don't," she said. "I can't bear it."

And they were silent again.

Their silence was more real to them than the sounding storm. There was
danger in it. It drew them back and back. It was poignant and
reminiscent. It came to them like the long stillness before their
passion. They had waited here before, like this, through moments tense
and increasing, for the supreme, toppling instant of their joy.

Their minds went round and round, looking for words to break the silence
and finding none. They were held there by their danger.

At last Anne spoke.

"Do you think it's over?"

"No. It's only just begun."

The rain hurled itself against the window, as if it would pluck them out
into the storm. It brimmed over from the roof like water poured out from
a bucket.

"We'll have to sit tight till it stops," he said.

Silence again, long, inveterate, dangerous. Every now and then Anne
coughed, the short, hard cough that hurt and frightened him. He knew he
ought to leave her; every minute