'Not yet,' said Isabel.

His voice was pleasant and ordinary, but it had a slight suggestion of
the stable to her. She wished he would come away. Whilst he was so
utterly invisible she was afraid of him.

'How's the time?' he asked.

'Not yet six,' she replied. She disliked to answer into the dark.
Presently he came very near to her, and she retreated out of doors.

'The weather blows in here,' he said, coming steadily forward, feeling
for the doors. She shrank away. At last she could dimly see him.

'Bertie won't have much of a drive,' he said, as he closed the doors.

'He won't indeed!' said Isabel calmly, watching the dark shape at the
door.

'Give me your arm, dear,' she said.

She pressed his arm close to her, as she went. But she longed to see him,
to look at him. She was nervous. He walked erect, with face rather
lifted, but with a curious tentative movement of his powerful, muscular
legs. She could feel the clever, careful, strong contact of his feet with
the earth, as she balanced against him. For a moment he was a tower of
darkness to her, as if he rose out of the earth.

In the house-passage he wavered, and went cautiously, with a curious look
of silence about him as he felt for the bench. Then he sat down heavily.