I almost wish I had. And yet it was not so when I
was clinging tooth and nail to the cliff yonder; and these folks would
not have died if they could have helped it, neither. There's something
ugly in black Death that disinclines man to woo her. This wind bites to
the marrow, and I'll go. I've seen Gethin now, and there's an end." He
turned, and walked as slowly as the blast would let him toward the gate.
"And yet, if it was warmer, and summer-time," continued he, "I should
like to sketch these things, or some of them, especially if Harry were
with me." He came out, and locked the door, and once more stood in the
shelter of it, with the key in his hand. "She'll be glad I went back for
this, and know that it was done for her sake. If she had but money,
now--this girl--and was a lady, and all that! Or if I could choose whom
I would!" He began to descend slowly, step by step; the furious gale
forgotten; his late escape from death unremembered; one thought alone
monopolizing his mind--the thought that monopolizes all men's minds (or
nearly all) at his age. It was here that his hat had blown off, and her
soft curls had played about his face; it was there that he had first
clasped her waist, and had not been rebuked. Then he fell to thinking of
all that had happened between them during the few hours that were
already an epoch in his life.
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