how dark the clouds have become, and how the trees are tossed,"
she said, walking towards the window, yet speaking and moving with only
a dim sense of what she was doing.

Will followed her at a little distance, and leaned against the tall
back of a leather chair, on which he ventured now to lay his hat and
gloves, and free himself from the intolerable durance of formality to
which he had been for the first time condemned in Dorothea's presence.
It must be confessed that he felt very happy at that moment leaning on
the chair. He was not much afraid of anything that she might feel now.

They stood silent, not looking at each other, but looking at the
evergreens which were being tossed, and were showing the pale underside
of their leaves against the blackening sky. Will never enjoyed the
prospect of a storm so much: it delivered him from the necessity of
going away. Leaves and little branches were hurled about, and the
thunder was getting nearer. The light was more and more sombre, but
there came a flash of lightning which made them start and look at each
other, and then smile. Dorothea began to say what she had been
thinking of.

"That was a wrong thing for you to say, that you would have had nothing
to try for. If we had lost our own chief good, other people's good
would remain, and that is worth trying for. Some can be happy. I
seemed to see that more clearly than ever, when I was the most
wretched. I can hardly think how I could have borne the trouble, if
that feeling had not come to me to make strength."

"You have never felt the sort of misery I felt," said Will; "the misery
of knowing that you must despise me."

"But I have felt worse--it was worse to think ill--" Dorothea had begun
impetuously, but broke off.

Will colored. He had the sense that whatever she said was uttered in
the vision of a fatality that kept them apart. He was silent a moment,
and then said passionately--

"We may at least have the comfort of speaking to each other without
disguise. Since I must go away--since we must always be divided--you
may think of me as one on the brink of the grave."

While he was speaking there came a vivid flash of lightning which lit
each of them up for the other--and the light seemed to be the terror of
a hopeless love. Dorothea darted instantaneously from the window; Will
followed her, seizing her hand with a spasmodic movement; and so they
stood, with their hands clasped, like two children,