He jumped up and stared hard at the west face of the clock, whose gilt hands were still discernible in the fading light. It was five minutes of eight.
When he slipped into the shadow of the Preaching Tree it had grown dark. Fitful lightning flashed. In the meadow fireflies were thick. They made him think of the eager beating of many fiery little hearts, exposed by gloom, lost again in that opalescent glare on the horizon against which the ragged leaves of elm and maple were hung like blobs of ink or swarms of bees.
He breathed fast; he heard mysterious fluted calls. A victim of torturing uncertainty, he strained his ear for that swift footfall. Suddenly he felt her come upon him from behind, buoyant, like a warm wave, and press firm hands over his eyelids. Her hair stung his cheek like wire.
Rackby felt the strong beat of that adventurous heart like drums of conquest. He crushed her in his arms until she all but cried out. There was nothing he could say. Her breath carried the keen scent of crushed checkerberry plums. She had been nibbling at tender pippins by the way, like a wild thing.
The harbor master remembered later that he seemed to have twice the number of senses appointed to mortals in that hour. A heavy fragrance fell through the dusk out of the thick of the horse-chestnut tree. A load of hay went by, the rack creaking, the driver sunk well out of sight. He heard the dreaming note of the tree toad; frogs croaked in the lush meadow, water babbled under the crazy wooden sidewalk.--The meadow was one vast pulse of fireflies. He felt this industrious flame enter his own wrists.
Then the birches over the way threshed about in a gust of wind. Almost at once rain fell in heavy drops; blinds banged to and fro, a strong smell of dust was in his nostrils, beat up from the road by driving rain.
The girl first put the palm of her hand hard against his cheek, then yielded, with a pliant and surprising motion of the whole body. Her eyes were full of a strange, bright wickedness. Like torches they seemed to cast a crimson light on the already glowing cheek.
Fascinated by this thought, Rackby bent closer. The tented leaves of the horse-chestnut did not stir. Surely the dusky cheek had actually a touch of crimson in the gloom.