He turned his face away again, and seemed to forget her. `I want to touch you like you touch me,' she said. `I've never really touched your body.'

He looked at her, and smiled again. `Now?' he said. `No! No! Not here! At the hut. Would you mind?'

`How do I touch you?' he asked.

`When you feel me.'

He looked at her, and met her heavy, anxious eyes.

`And do you like it when I feel you?' he asked, laughing at her still.

`Yes, do you?' she said.

`Oh, me!' Then he changed his tone. `Yes,' he said. `You know without asking.' Which was true.

She rose and picked up her hat. `I must go,' she said.

`Will you go?' he replied politely.

She wanted him to touch her, to say something to her, but he said nothing, only waited politely.

`Thank you for the tea,' she said.

`I haven't thanked your Ladyship for doing me the honours of my tea-pot,' he said.

She went down the path, and he stood in the doorway, faintly grinning. Flossie came running with her tail lifted. And Connie had to plod dumbly across into the wood, knowing he was standing there watching her, with that incomprehensible grin on his face.

She walked home very much downcast and annoyed. She didn't at all like his saying he had been made use of because, in a sense, it was true. But he oughtn't to have said it. Therefore, again, she was divided between two feelings: resentment against him, and a desire to make it up with him.

She passed a very uneasy and irritated tea-time, and at once went up to her room. But when she was there it was no good; she could neither sit nor stand. She would have to do something about it. She would have to go back to the hut; if he was not there, well and good.

She slipped out of the side door, and took her way direct and a little sullen. When she came to the clearing she was terribly uneasy. But there he was again, in his shirt-sleeves, stooping, letting the hens out of the coops, among the chicks that were now growing a little gawky, but were much more trim than hen- chickens.

She went straight across to him. `You see I've come!' she said.

`Ay, I see it!' he said, straightening his back, and looking at her with a faint amusement.

`Do you let the hens out now?' she asked.

`Yes, they've sat themselves to skin and bone,' he said. `An' now they're not all that anxious to come out an' feed. There's no self in a sitting hen; she's all in the eggs or the chicks.'

The poor mother-hens; such blind devotion! even to eggs not their own! Connie looked at them in compassion. A helpless silence fell between the man and the woman.

`Shall us go i' th' 'ut?' he asked.