Nevertheless, she had awakened, during a spasm of remorseful self-abasement, some nobler quality latent in the man.
And now--as that flash of lightning illuminated Bridget's face and made him keenly sensitive to the charm of her personality--her wayward fascination, her inconsistencies, her weakness, her temperamental craving for dramatic contrast, her reckless toying with emotion--by a curious law of paradox, there came back upon Willoughby Maule that scene with his dying wife, and he had again the flashing perception of something sacred, unexplainable, to which his own nature could not reach.
It sobered him.

He had had the impulse to snatch her to his breast, to seal the half-compact with a lover's kiss, so passionate that the memory of it must for ever bind her to him.
But the impulse was past.

They stood perfectly silent, stiff, in the interval--it seemed a very long one--between the lightning flash, and the distant reverberation of thunder which followed it.
Then he said mechanically, like one walking out of a dream?
'There's going to be a storm.

Are you frightened ?' 'No,' she answered.

'I'm never frightened of storms!' and added, 'besides, Colin would be so glad of rain.' Before he could reply, she had glided away again and he was alone.
He thought it strange that she should be thinking of her husband and his material interests just then..