She hung her head in shame; and Wemyss, looking down at the little bobbed head with its bright, thick young hair bent over their folded hands as though it were saying its prayers,--Wemyss, not having his pipe in his mouth to protect him and help him to hold on to himself, for he had hastily stuffed it in his pocket, all alight as it was, when he saw her at the gate, and there at that moment it was burning holes,--Wemyss, after a brief struggle with his wishes, in which as usual he was defeated, stooped and began to kiss Lucy's hair. And having begun, he continued. She was horrified. At the first kiss she started as if she had been hit, and then, clinging to the gate, she stood without moving, without being able to think or lift her head, in the same attitude bowed over his and her own hands, while this astonishing thing was being done to her hair. Death all round them, death pervading every corner of their lives, death in its blackest shape brooding over him, and--kisses. Her mind, if anything so gentle could be said to be in anything that sounds so loud, was in an uproar. She had had the complete, guileless trust in him of a child for a tender and sympathetic friend,--a friend, not a father, though he was old enough to be her father, because in a father, however much hidden by sweet comradeship as it had been in hers, there always at the back of everything was, after all, authority. And it had been even more than the trust of a child in its friend: it had been the trust of a child in a fellow-child hit by the same punishment,--a simple fellowship, a wordless understanding. She hung on to the gate while her thoughts flew about in confusion within her. These kisses--and his wife just dead--and dead so terribly--how long would she have to stand there with this going on--she couldn't lift up her head, for then she felt it would only get worse--she couldn't turn and run into the house, because he was holding her hands. He oughtn't to have--oh, he oughtn't to have--it wasn't fair.... Then--what was he saying? She heard him say, in an absolutely broken voice, laying his head on hers, 'We two poor things--we two poor things'--and then he said and did nothing more, but kept his head like that, and presently, thick though her hair was, through it came wetness. At that Lucy's thoughts suddenly stopped flying about and were quite still. Her heart went to wax within her, melted again into pity, into a great flood of pitiful understanding. The dreadfulness of lonely grief.... Was there anything in the world so blackly desolate as to be left alone in grief? This poor broken fellow-creature--and she herself, so lost, so lost in loneliness--they were two half-drowned things, clinging together in a shipwreck--how could she let him go, leave him to himself--how could she be let go, left to herself.... 'Lucy,' he said, 'look at me----' She lifted her head. He loosed her hands, and put his arms round her shoulders.