he valley.

"Oh, why did you come?" he cried, pressing closer. "Why did you come?
It's enough to kill a woman!"

"Hardly," said she.

"But you're wet through," he protested.

"And so are you."

"Have my coat." And he started to slip it off.

"No. One more wet garment won't make me any drier."

"Then put it over your head. To keep off this awful beat of the storm.
I'll lead your horse."

"No, thank you; I'm all right," she said firmly, putting out a hand
and checking his motion to uncoat himself. "You've been walking. I've
been riding. You need it more than I do." And then she added: "Did I
hurt you much?"

"Hurt me?"

"When I struck you with my crop."

"That? I'd forgotten that."

"I'm very sorry--if I hurt you."

"It's nothing. I wish you'd take my coat. Bend lower down." And moving
forward, he so placed himself that his broad, strong body was a
partial shield to her against the gale.

This new concern for her, the like of which he had never before
evinced the faintest symptoms, begot in her a strange, tingling, but
blurred emotion. They moved on side by side, now without speech,
gasping for the very breath that the gale sought to tear away from
their lips. The storm was momently gaining power and fury. Afterward
the ancient weather-men of Calloway County were to say that in their
time they had never seen its like. The lightning split the sky into
even more fearsome fiery chasms, and in the moments of wild
illumination they could see the road gullied by scores of impromptu
rivulets, could glimpse the broad river billowing and raging, the
cattle huddling terrified in the pastures, the woods swaying and
writhing in deathlike grapple. The wind hurled by them in a thousand
moods and tones, all angry; a fine, high shrieking on its topmost
note--a hoarse snarl--a lull, as though the straining monster were
pausing to catch its breath--then a roaring, sweeping onrush as if
bent on irresistible destruction. And on top of this glare, this rage,
was the thousandfold crackle, rattle, rumble of the thunder.

At such a time wild beasts, with hostility born in their blood, draw
close together. It was a storm to resolve, as it were, all complex
shades of human feeling into their elementary colours--when fear and
hate and love stand starkly forth, unqualified, unblended. Without
being aware that she was observing, Katherine sensed that Bruce's
agitation was mounting with the storm. And as she felt his quivering
pr