It had begun to rain while she was still in Galway, and as she advanced along the road the rain grew momentarily heavier. There was not a scrap of shelter of any sort, and before she had gone many miles she was drenched to the skin. The immensely thick red flannel petticoat she wore, in all other respects an admirable garment, is apt in the long run to become a terrible drag in such a downpour as this. Once soaked, it weighed upon her as though it had been a petticoat of solid lead, and she had again and again to pause and wring it out as she might have wrung a sponge. In spite of this she hurried on along the dreary, featureless road, hardly heeding where she was going, only filled with the desire of escaping from that dreadful fair, which to her had been a scene not merely of disappointment but something far worse--a breaking-down of this sweet, this newly-found, this hardly-touched happiness--a source of intense bitterness; of a bitterness how intense she herself hardly yet knew. At last, though how long after she left Galway she could not have told, she once more reached the spot, not far from Cloghmore Point, where they had disembarked in the morning. No boat was ready to take her across; the men were all away; there was not even a curragh to be seen, or, in her present mood, she might have attempted to get across the bay by herself. As it was, there was nothing for it but to wait till someone arrived. Once more, therefore, wringing out her petticoat and gathering up her hair, which had got loose in her race, she got under the shelter of a bank and sat down upon a stone, near to where a small stream was bubbling and trickling through a pipe. It was a wretched spot. There were a few cabins a little farther up the road, but it did not occur to her, somehow, to ask for shelter in any of them. She simply sat still upon her stone under the bank, waiting for someone to come, feeling miserable, but almost too tired now to know why or about what. The rain beat upon her head; the wind whistled round her; the sea was a sheet of ink, save for here and there the white crest of a breaker. She was growing very cold after the heat of her walk, and her wet clothes clung closely. She had eaten nothing since the early morning. As regards all this, however, she was for the moment not indifferent merely, but unconscious of it.