Some clock was striking the last strokes of eight, but dark had scarcely fallen. It had been a wet afternoon, and though the streets were drying rapidly now under a sounding wind, they still held pearly reflections of the pale, torn sky. Where the moisture stayed in shallow pools, it was like the high light on round white pearls, where the shadows of the tall houses congregated it was like grey and black pearl. Soft clouds, grey as doves, drove slowly across the luminous sky. The universe was washed clear of colour, and the world through which Joanna sped light-footed might have been one of those dim pictures in which children take delight – pictures that lie scattered by the thousand on the seashore, and are so cunningly painted on the pearly inward of each deserted shell.

And though along the whole vista of dark stone street there was no tree, the emergency of spring made itself felt as surely as in any country woodland. Certainly the young woman in each pulse and duct and pore of her body was alive to the season’s clamour. She was unfurled like a flag to the wind of spring. For the first time since she had lain by the margin of the upper pond at Duntarvie, she found herself able to look full upon beauty without grieving. In the interval there had always been a discord between herself and her apprehension of beauty outside herself. Sunsets, the faces of flowers, the evening star raised steadily like a torch above a screen of cloud – these had been hardly endurable, always lacking the consummation they called for. But to-night she felt at one with the whole earth’s loveliness, for she was desired, and her lover awaited her coming.

At the appointed corner Bob in his shabby waterproof moved to meet her.

“Let’s go down there, shall we?” he suggested. And with a nervous movement of his chin he indicated the hill that plunged downwards on their right. There was no one else in the quiet street but a lamplighter who scurried on in front of them, lighting the yellow lamps one after another, till he turned a corner; and with the coming to life of the lamps, as by a miracle the world was flooded with transparent wonderful blue. “Now” – thought Joanna, as they reached one of the flights of stone steps which in places eased the steepness of the hill – “Now he will tell me he loves me.” Surely the moment had come – the moment for which all her life she had been waiting.