'
So we went back, and after the door was bolted, took both hands and stood
up face to face in the passage looking into one another's eyes. I was
tired with a long walk and sleepless night, and so full of joy to see her
again that my head swam and all seemed a sweet dream. Then she squeezed
my hands, and I knew 'twas real, and was for kissing her for very love;
but she guessed what I would be at, perhaps, and cast my hands loose,
drawing back a little, as if to see me better, and saying, 'John, you
have grown a man in these two months.' So I did not kiss her.
But if it was true that I was grown a man, it was truer still that she
was grown a woman, and as tall as I. And these recent sufferings had
taken from her something of light and frolic girlhood, and left her with
a manner more staid and sober. She was dressed in black, with longer
skirts, and her hair caught up behind; and perhaps it was the mourning
frock that made her look pale and thin, as Ratsey said. So while I looked
at her, she looked at me, and could not choose but smile to see my
carter's smock; and as for my brown face and hands, thought I had been
hiding in some country underneath the sun, until I told her of the
walnut-juice. Then before we fell to talking, she said it was better we
should sit in the garden, for that a woman might come in to help her with
the house, and anyway it was safer, so that I might get out at the back
in case of need.
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