When she said that, he knew that he couldn't bear the thought of her going alone, and that he had all along been determined in his thought that she should not go alone. "If you'd say you loved me," he said, suddenly bending towards her, "I'd never let you out of my sight again." "Oh, yes, you would," she said; "you don't know whether you _do_ love me. Many's the time you think you don't. And I don't know whether I love you. Sometimes I think I do. What's love, anyway? I dunno. I think sometimes I'm not made to feel that way towards any one. But what I really meant to say to-night is, that I'm dead sick of this hanging-on. I'm going up to a cousin I've got Blackheath way a week from to-night. If you're coming, I'm glad. If you're not--well, I reckon I'll get over it." "A week from to-day--" He looked out over the water. "Aye. That's settled." Then, unexpected, as she so often was, she put her arms round his neck and drew his head down to her bosom and let her hand rest on his hair. "I like to feel you there," she said. "It's more a mother I feel to you than a lover." She would not let him kiss her, but suddenly moved away from him, into the dark, leaving him where he stood. When he was half-way home the storm that had been slowly, during the last hour and a half, climbing up above the town, broke. As he was crossing the market-place the rain came down in torrents, dancing upon the uneven cobbles with a kind of excited frenzy, and thickening the air with a curtain of mist. He climbed the High Street, his head down, feeling a physical satisfaction in the fierce soaking that the storm was giving him. The town was shining and deserted. Not a soul about. No sound except the hissing, sneering, chattering whisper of the deluge. He went up to his room and changed, putting on a dinner jacket, and came down to his father's study. It was too late for dinner, but he was not hungry; he did not know how long it was since he had felt hungry last. He knocked and went in. He felt a desperate urgency that he must somehow reconcile the interests and happiness of the two people who were then filling all his thoughts--his father and Annie. There must _be_ a way. He could feel still the touch of Annie's hand upon his head; he was more deeply bound to her by that evening's conversation than he had ever been before, but he longed to be able to reassure himself by some contact with his father that he was not going to hurt the old man, that he would be able to prove to him that his loyalty was true and his affection deep. Small causes produce lasting results, and the lives of many people would have been changed had Falk caught his father that night in another mood.