And now he could not tell, or, rather, blindly could not see, whether she suffered in the saying it.

A passionate protest rose in him, not so much against her words as against her self-control.

The man in him rose up against the woman's unlooked-for, unwelcome strength.
But as the hot words she had dared so much in her simplicity to avert from them both were bursting from him, they were checked by a sudden physical difficulty.

A bit of road was under water.

A little beck, swollen by the rain, had overflowed, and for a few yards distance the water stood about eight inches deep from hedge to hedge.