"I have been sketching in Leeuwen Kloof, and got caught in the storm.
There, uncle, let me pass, I want to take these wet things off. It is
a bitter night," and she ran to her room, leaving a long trail of water
behind her as she passed. The old man entered the house, shut the door,
and blew out the lantern.

"Now, what is it she reminds me of?" he said aloud as he groped his way
down the passage to the sitting-room. "Ah, I know, that night when she
first came here out of the rain leading Bessie by the hand. What can the
girl have been thinking of, not to see the thunder coming up? She ought
to know the signs of the weather here by now. Dreaming, I suppose,
dreaming. She's an odd woman, Jess, very." Perhaps he did not quite know
how accurate his guess was, and how true the conclusion he drew from it.
Certainly she had been dreaming, and she was an odd woman.

Meanwhile Jess was rapidly changing her clothes and removing the traces
of her struggle with the elements. But of that other struggle she had
gone through she could not remove the traces. They and the love that
arose out of it would endure as long as she endured. It was her former
self that had been cast off in it and which now lay behind her, an empty
and unmeaning thing like the shapeless heap of garments. It was all very
strange. So John had gone to look for her and had not found her. She was
glad that he had gone. It made her happy to think of him searching
and calling in the wet and the night. She was only a woman, and it was
natural that she should feel thus. By-and-by he would come back and find
her clothed and in her right mind and ready to greet him. She was glad
that he had not seen her wet and dishevelled. A girl looks so unpleasant
like that. It might have set him against her. Men like women to look
nice and clean and pretty. That gave her an idea. She turned to her
glass and, holding the light above her head, studied her own face