At noon the wind dropped. Thick clouds, the colour of dirty sheep's wool, packed tight by their own movement, roofed the sky and walled it round, hanging close to the horizon. A slight heaving and swelling in the grey mass packed it tighter. It was pregnant with rain. Here and there a steaming vapour broke from it as if puffed out by some immense interior commotion. Thin tissues detached themselves and hung like a frayed hem, lengthening, streaming to the hilltops in the west. Anne was going up the fields towards the Manor and Jerrold was coming down towards the Manor Farm. They met at the plantation as the first big drops fell. He called out to her, "I say, you oughtn't to be out a day like this." Anne had been ill all January with a slight touch of pleurisy after a cold that she had taken no care of. "I'm going to see Maisie." "You're _not_," he said. "It's going to rain like fury." "Maisie knows I don't mind rain," Anne said, and laughed. "Maisie'd have a fit if she knew you were out in it. Look, how it's coming down over there." Westwards and northwards the round roof and walls of cloud were shaken and the black rain hung sheeted between sky and earth. Overhead the dark tissues thinned out and lengthened. The fir trees quivered; they gave out slight creaking, crackling noises as the rain came down. It poured off each of the sloping fir branches like a jet from a tap. "We must make a dash for it," Jerrold said. And they ran together, laughing, down 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.