It was the opening of the side-door. And there was Christie, emerging in her out-of-doors attire!

He called her name loudly before he knew what he was doing, and she turned and looked at him.

With the poignance of that vision of pier-post and green seaweed still in his brain, the sight of her figure there, so quaint and pitiful, in her old-fashioned cloak and tightly-pulled-on gloves, stirred in him a sudden sense of something so beautiful in life, that it melted the bones within him. She herself seemed startled and overjoyed at seeing him; and tossing aside her accustomed reserve, she hurried towards him, heedless of the rain-soaked soil under her feet, heedless of any windows that might be overlooking them, her arms impetuously stretched out and her mobile little face working under her tremulous emotion like a ruffled leaf in a gusty wind.

Once in possession of her hand he defiantly retained it; and together they moved close up to the wall at the end of the enclosure, where, on their rain-battered stalks, drooped those miserable chrysanthemums.