at these things looked as
they had always looked on any night.

"Come out, I want to see you," he whispered at last, and his hand
closing on her drew her out of the dark hall. She liked the wetness of
the flags under her stockinged feet, the fall of the rain on her face.

"You little thing! You little thing!" he muttered: and then, "I love
you."

Her head drooped. She lifted it bravely.

"Ellen! Ellen!" He repeated the name in a passion of wonder, till,
feeling the raindrops on her head, he exclaimed urgently, "But you're
getting wet! Darling, let us go in."

When he had shut the front door and they were left alone in the dark,
and she was free from the compulsion of his beauty and the intent gaze
he had set on her face, she tried to seize her life's last chance of
escape. She wrenched away her wrist and made a timid hostile noise. But
he linked his arm in hers and whispered reassuringly, "I love you," and
drew her, since there was a light there, into the kitchen. He put his
hat down on the table beside her plate and cup and threw his wet coat
across a chair, while she said querulously, sobbingly, "Why do you call
me little? I am not little!"

He took her hands in his; her inky fingers were intertwined with his
fingers, long and stained with strange stains, massive and powerful and
yet tremulous. The sight and touch filled her with extraordinary joy and
terror. At last things were beginning to happen to her, and she did not
know if she had strength enough to support it. If she could have
countermanded her destiny she would, although she knew from the rich
colour that tinged this moment, in spite of her inadequacy, it was going
to be of some high kind of glory.

He took her in his arms. His lips, brushing her ear, asked, "Do you love
me? Tell me, tell me, do you love me?" Dreamily, incredulously, she
listened to that strong heart-beat which she had imagined. But he
pressed her. "Ellen, be kind! Tell me, do you love me?" That was cruel
of him. She was not sure that she approved of love. The position of
women being what it was. Men were tyrants, and they seemed to be able to
make their wives ignoble. Married women were often anti-Suffragists;
they were often fat; they never seemed to go out long walks in the hills
or to write poetry. She laid her hands flat against his chest and
pushed away from him. "No!" she whimpered. But he bent on her a face
wolfish with a hunger that was nevertheless sweet-tempered, since it