Great Expectations

When I got into the courtyard, I found Estella waiting with the keys.

But she neither asked me where I had been, nor why I had kept her

waiting; and there was a bright flush upon her face, as though something

had happened to delight her. Instead of going straight to the gate, too,

she stepped back into the passage, and beckoned me.

"Come here! You may kiss me, if you like."

I kissed her cheek as she turned it to me. I think I would have gone

through a great deal to kiss her cheek. But I felt that the kiss was

given to the coarse common boy as a piece of money might have been, and

that it was worth nothing.

What with the birthday visitors, and what with the cards, and what with

the fight, my stay had lasted so long, that when I neared home the light

on the spit of sand off the point on the marshes was gleaming against

a black night-sky, and Joe's furnace was flinging a path of fire across

the road.