‘Now you can push it through yourself.  I hope it won’t hurt much.’  Taking the hook, I push it through, and a drop of blood follows it.  ‘Oh!’ she cries, but I assure her it is nothing, and stick the hook surreptitiously in my coat sleeve.  Then we both laugh, and I look at her for the first time.  She has a very white forehead, with little tendrils of hair blowing round it under her grey cap, her eyes are grey.  I didn’t see that then, I only saw they were steady, smiling eyes that matched her mouth.  Such a mouth, the most maddening mouth a man ever longed to kiss, above a too-pointed chin, soft as a child’s; indeed, the whole face looks soft in the misty light.

‘I am sorry I spoilt your sport!’ I say.

’Oh, that don’t matter, it’s time to stop.  I got two brace, one a beauty.’

She is winding in her line, and I look in her basket; they are beauties, one two-pounder, the rest running from a half to a pound.

‘What fly?’

‘Yellow dun took that one, but your assailant was a partridge spider.’  I sling her basket over my shoulder; she takes it as a matter of course, and we retrace our steps.  I feel curiously happy as we walk towards the road; there is a novel delight in her nearness; the feel of woman works subtly and strangely in me; the rustle of her skirt as it brushes the black-heads in the meadow-grass, and the delicate perfume, partly violets, partly herself, that comes to me with each of her movements is a rare pleasure.  I am hardly surprised when she turns into the garden of the inn, I think I knew from the first that she would.

’Better bathe that ear of yours, and put a few drops of carbolic in the water.’  She takes the basket as she says it, and goes into the kitchen.  I hurry over this, and go into the little sitting-room.  There is a tray with a glass of milk and some oaten cakes upon the table.  I am too disturbed to sit down; I stand at the window and watch the bats flitter in the gathering moonlight, and listen with quivering nerves for her step—­perhaps she will send for the tray, and not come after all.  What a fool I am to be disturbed by a grey-clad witch with a tantalizing mouth!  That comes of loafing about doing nothing.  I mentally darn the old fool who saved her money instead of spending it.  Why the devil should I be bothered?  I don’t want it anyhow.  She comes in as I fume, and I forget everything at her entrance.  I push the armchair towards the table, and she sinks quietly into it, pulling the tray nearer.  She has a wedding ring on, but somehow it never strikes me to wonder if she is married or a widow or who she may be.  I am content to watch her break her biscuits.  She has the prettiest hands, and a trick of separating her last fingers when she takes hold of anything.  They remind me of white orchids I saw somewhere.  She led me to talk; about Africa, I think.  I liked to watch her eyes glow deeply in the shadow and then catch light as she bent forward to say something in her quick responsive way.