He met her that first Wednesday in May, as he was leaving Mrs. Gale’s cottage.

She was coming along the narrow path by the beck and there was no avoiding her.

She came toward him smiling.  He had always rather liked her smile.  It was quiet.  It never broke up, as it were, her brooding face.  He had noticed that it didn’t even part her lips or make them thinner.  If anything it made them thicker, it curved still more the crushed bow of the upper lip and the pensive sweep of the lower.  But it opened doors; it lit lights.  It broadened quite curiously the rather too broad nostrils; it set the wide eyes wider; it brought a sudden blue into their thick gray.  In her cheeks it caused a sudden leaping and spreading of their flame.  Her rather high and rather prominent cheek-bones gave character and a curious charm to Mary’s face; they had the effect of lifting her bloom directly under the pure and candid gray of her eyes, leaving her red mouth alone in its dominion.  That mouth with its rather too long upper lip and its almost perpetual brooding was saved from immobility by its alliance with her nostrils.

Such was Mary’s face.  Rowcliffe had often watched it, acknowledging its charm, while he said to himself that for him it could never have any meaning or fascination, any more than Mary could.  There wasn’t much in Mary’s face, and there wasn’t much in Mary.  She was too ruminant, too tranquil.  He sometimes wondered how much it would take to trouble her.

And yet there were times when that tranquillity was soothing.  She had always, even when Ally was at her worst, smiled at him as if nothing had happened or could happen, and she smiled at him as if nothing had happened now.  And it struck Rowcliffe, as it had frequently struck him before, how good her face was.

She held out her hand to him and looked at him.

And as if only then she had seen in his face the signs of a suffering she had been unaware of, her eyes rounded in a sudden wonder of distress.  They said in their goodness and their candor, “Oh, I see how horribly you’ve suffered.  I didn’t know and I’m so sorry.”  Then they looked away, and it was like the quiet withdrawal of a hand that feared lest in touching it should hurt him.

Mary began to talk of the weather and of Essy and of Essy’s baby, as if her eyes had never seen anything at all.  Then, just as they parted, she said, “When are you coming to see us again?” as if he had been to see them only the other day.

He said he would come as soon as he was asked.

And Mary reflected, as one arranging a multitude of engagements.

“Well, then—­let me see—­can you come to tea on Friday?  Or Monday?  Father’ll be at home both days.”

And Rowcliffe said thanks, he’d come on Friday.

Mary went on to the cottage and Rowcliffe to his surgery.

He wondered why she hadn’t said a word about Gwenda.  He supposed it was because she knew that there was nothing she could say that would not hurt him.