It was half-past one by the clock on the mantelpiece, and the rain was still pelting on the pavement of the street outside with a sound like that of an army in retreat. Stowell was feeling alternately hot and cold, and the voice within him was saying, "Must you go? You would be drenched through before you got back from Mrs. Quayle's, and the girl would be as wet in getting there as if you had dropped her into the sea." After a few minutes more he said, "Bessie, I'm afraid we shall have to give up the idea of going to Mrs. Quayle's." "Yes?" "But you can stay here, and I can go over to the Mitre." "No, no." "It's nothing--only two yards away." Johnny Kelly, the boots, slept on the ground floor--he could get him up without ringing the bell. Of course he would have to tell the old man some cock-and-bull story--that he had lost his key or something. "But it's the very thing. I wonder I didn't think of it before." He half hoped and half feared she might make some further protest. But she did not, so he picked up his cap and ulster and was making for the door when he thought of the gas. Would Bessie, who had been brought up in a thatched cottage, know how to put it out? "Well, no, no," she stammered. "It's quite simple. You turn the tap, so...." He had to kneel by her side to show her, and he was feeling the warm glow he had felt in the glen. "But not being used of it...." "Then I know--the reading-lamp!" He leapt up to light it, and having done so, he turned out the branch under the white globe, saying, with a laugh, it was lucky he had thought of the lamp, for if old Johnny had seen the light in the window the story of the key would have sounded thin, wouldn't it? Then she laughed too, and they laughed together, but their laughter broke into a sharp and breathless silence. He carried the lamp into the bedroom, put it on the table by the bedside and then pulled down the white window-blind, breaking the cord by the tug of his trembling fingers. He was feeling as if another storm, a storm of emotions, were now thundering within him. "Must you go?" "You must! You shall! Good Lord, could a man of any conscience .... Never! Never!" When he returned to the sitting-room Bessie had risen to her feet. She was standing at the opposite side of the mantelpiece and the intoxicating red light of the fire was over her. Stowell thought he had never seen anything so beautiful. But he could not trust himself to look twice. "You'll be all right here, Bessie," he said, in a loud voice, snatching up his coat and cap and making for the door. "You can let yourself out of the house as early as you like in the morning; and if you decide to go back to that damned old devil at Baldromma you can tell him from me where you passed the night, and I'll stand up for you--why shouldn't I?" Then he heard a breathless cry behind him, and then the words, "Must you go?"