“It is going to pour,” she said; and, as they walked on with a futile quickening of pace, she heard him talk of something else, and called herself a fool for the tumult in her heart. The rain gathered itself together and pelted them. She was glad of the excuse to break blindly into a run, and Doyle needed all his newly acquired energy to keep up with her. The storm was behind them, and as it darkened and thickened and crashed and drove them on, Rhoda’s blood tingled with a wild sweet knowledge that she fled before something stronger and stranger than the storm, and that in the end she would be overtaken, in the end she would cede. Her sense of this culminated when Philip Doyle put a staying hand upon her arm—she could not have heard him speak—and she sped on faster, with a little frightened cry. “Come back!” he shouted; and, without knowing why, she did as he bade her, struggling at every step, it seemed, into a chaos out of which the rain smote her on both cheeks, with only one clear sensation—that he had her hand very closely pressed to his side, and that somewhere or other, presently, there would be shelter. They found it not ten yards behind—one of those shallow caves that Sri Krishna scooped out long ago to lodge his beggar priests in. Some Bhutia coolies had been cooking a meal there; a few embers still glowed on a heap of ashes in the middle of the place. Doyle explained, as he thrust her gently in, that these had caught his eye. “You won’t mind my leaving you here,” he said, “while I go on for a dandy and wraps and things? I shall not be a moment longer than I can help. You won’t be afraid?” “In this rain! It would be wicked. Yes, I shall—I shall be horribly afraid! You must stay here too, until it is over. Please come inside _at once_.” The little imperious note thrilled Doyle; but he stayed where he was. “My dear child,” he said, “this may last for hours, and, if you don’t get home somehow, you are bound to get a chill. Besides, I must let your mother know.” “It will probably be over by the time you reach the house. And my mother is always quite willing to entrust me to Providence, Mr. Doyle. And if you go I’ll come, too.” She looked so resolute that Doyle hesitated. “Won’t you be implored to stay here?” he asked. She shook her head. “Not if you go,” she said. And, without further parley, he stooped and came in.