bers heated it red as it lay.

VIII

Rain, Darkness, and Anxious Wanderers

While the effigy of Eustacia was melting to nothing, and the fair
woman herself was standing on Rainbarrow, her soul in an abyss of
desolation seldom plumbed by one so young, Yeobright sat lonely at
Blooms-End. He had fulfilled his word to Thomasin by sending off
Fairway with the letter to his wife, and now waited with increased
impatience for some sound or signal of her return. Were Eustacia
still at Mistover the very least he expected was that she would send
him back a reply tonight by the same hand; though, to leave all to her
inclination, he had cautioned Fairway not to ask for an answer. If
one were handed to him he was to bring it immediately; if not, he was
to go straight home without troubling to come round to Blooms-End
again that night.

But secretly Clym had a more pleasing hope. Eustacia might possibly
decline to use her pen--it was rather her way to work silently--and
surprise him by appearing at his door. How fully her mind was made up
to do otherwise he did not know.

To Clym's regret it began to rain and blow hard as the evening
advanced. The wind rasped and scraped at the corners of the house,
and filliped the eavesdroppings like peas against the panes. He
walked restlessly about the untenanted rooms, stopping strange noises
in windows and doors by jamming splinters of wood into the casements
and crevices, and pressing together the lead-work of the quarries
where it had become loosened from the glass. It was one of those
nights when cracks in the walls of old churches widen, when ancient
stains on the ceilings of decayed manor houses are renewed and
enlarged from the size of a man's hand to an area of many feet. The
little gate in the palings before his dwelling continually opened and
clicked together again, but when he looked out eagerly nobody was
there; it was as if invisible shapes of the dead were passing in on
their way to visit him.

Between ten and eleven o'clock, finding that neither Fairway nor
anybody else came to him, he retired to rest, and despite his
anxieties soon fell asleep. His sleep, however, was not very sound,
by reason of the expectancy he had given way to, and he was easily
awakened by a knocking which began at the door about an hour after.
Clym arose and looked out of the window. Rain was still falling
heavily, the whole expanse of heath before him emitting a subdued
hiss under the downp