''Look at the sky,'' she said quickly. The sky had grown darker. ''I think it will thunder again. Here is the new rain, look!''
She closed her eyes and let the rain fall on her face, and after another second I could not have said what were raindrops, and what tears. I went to her and touched her arm.
''Put your cloak about you,'' I said. Now the rain fell quick and hard. She let me lift her hood and fasten it, as a child might; and I think, if I had not drawn her from the grave, she would have stayed there and been soaked. But I made her stumble with me to the door of the little chapel. It was shut up fast with a rusting chain and a padlock, but above it was a porch of rotted wood. The rain struck the wood and made it tremble. Our skirts were dark with water at the hems. We stood close to one another, our shoulders tight against the chapel door, and the rain came down—straight down, like arrows. A thousand arrows and one poor heart. She said,
''Mr Rivers has asked me to marry him, Sue.''
She said it in a flat voice, like a girl saying a lesson; and though I had waited so hard to hear her say it, when I answered my words came out heavy as hers. I said,
''Oh, Miss Maud, I am gladder than anything!''
A drop of rain fell between our faces.
Are you truly?'' she said. Her cheeks were damp, her hair clinging to them. ''Then,'' she went on mis