A first meeting between lovers comes less as an encounter with a stranger than a recognition of someone you’ve been waiting for. 

And just as we were singing that, and the wheels going like churn-owls, there was a quick footfall without, and a rush of fresh air, and a long ray of sunshine from the door to me, and he stood there in the light looking upon us. 

‘He,’ I say, as if you’d know him out of the world as I did. 

He stood in the doorway, and I rose up from my seat in the shadows at the back of the room as if he was my own bidden guest.  

Source: Mary Webb, Precious Bane (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981), p. 94

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