The fire was sinking, so he put on coal. The house was now quite dark, save for the light of a street-lamp that shone in faintly from beyond the holly trees. He lit the gas with matches he found on the mantel-piece. Then he emptied the pockets of his own clothes, and threw all his wet things in a heap into the scullery. After which he gathered up her sodden clothes, gently, and put them in a separate heap on the copper-top in the scullery. It was six o’clock on the clock. His own watch had stopped. He ought to go back to the surgery. He waited, and still she did not come down. So he went to the foot of the stairs and called: “I shall have to go.” Almost immediately he heard her coming down. She had on her best dress of black voile, and her hair was tidy, but still damp. She looked at him—and in spite of herself, smiled. “I don’t like you in those clothes,” she said. “Do I look a sight?” he answered. They were shy of one another. “I’ll make you some tea,” she said. “No, I must go.” “Must you?” And she looked at him again with the wide, strained, doubtful eyes. And again, from the pain of his breast, he knew how he loved her. He went and bent to kiss her, gently, passionately, with his heart’s painful kiss. “And my hair smells so horrible,” she murmured in distraction. “And I’m so awful, I’m so awful! Oh, no, I’m too awful.” And she broke into bitter, heart-broken sobbing. “You can’t want to love me, I’m horrible.” “Don’t be silly, don’t be silly,” he said, trying to comfort her, kissing her, holding her in his arms. “I want you, I want to marry you, we’re going to be married, quickly, quickly—tomorrow if I can.” But she only sobbed terribly, and cried: “I feel awful. I feel awful. I feel I’m horrible to you.” “No, I want you, I want you,” was all he answered, blindly, with that terrible intonation which frightened her almost more than her horror lest he should _not_ want her. FANNY AND ANNIE Flame-lurid his face as he turned among the throng of flame-lit and dark faces upon the platform. In the light of the furnace she caught sight of his drifting countenance, like a piece of floating fire. And the nostalgia, the doom of homecoming went through her veins like a drug. His eternal face, flame-lit now! The pulse and darkness of red fire from the furnace towers in the sky, lighting the desultory, industrial crowd on the wayside station, lit him and went out. Of course he did not see her. Flame-lit and unseeing! Always the same, with his meeting eyebrows, his common cap, and his red-and-black scarf knotted round his throat. Not even a collar to meet her! The flames had sunk, there was shadow. She opened the door of her grimy, branch-line carriage, and began to get down her bags. The porter was nowhere, of course, but there was Harry, obscure, on the outer edge of the little crowd, missing her, of course. “Here! Harry!” she called, waving her umbrella in the twilight. He hurried forward.