“You live quite alone?”
“Yes—if you call it alone?”
She did not understand. It seemed unusual to her. What was the meaning of it?
And whenever her eyes, after watching him for some time, inevitably met his, she was aware of a heat beating up over her consciousness. She sat motionless and in conflict. Who was this strange man who was at once so near to her? What was happening to her? Something in his young, warm-twinkling eyes seemed to assume a right to her, to speak to her, to extend her his protection. But how? Why did he speak to her? Why were his eyes so certain, so full of light and confident, waiting for no permission nor signal?
Tilly returned with a large leaf and found the two silent. At once he felt it incumbent on him to speak, now the serving-woman had come back.
“How old is your little girl?” he asked.
“Four years,” she replied.
“Her father hasn’t been dead long, then?” he asked.
“She was one year when he died.”
“Three years?”
“Yes, three years that he is dead—yes.”
Curiously quiet she was, almost abstracted, answering these questions. She looked at him again, with some maidenhood opening in her eyes. He felt he could not move, neither towards her nor away from her. Something about her presence hurt him, till he was almost rigid before her. He saw the girl’s wondering look rise in her eyes.
Tilly handed her the butter and she rose.
“Thank you very much,” she said. “How much is it?”
“We’ll make th’ vicar a present of it,” he said. “It’ll do for me goin’ to church.”
“It ’ud look better of you if you went to church and took th’ money for your butter,” said Tilly, persistent in her claim to him.
“You’d have to put in, shouldn’t you?” he said.
“How much, please?” said the Polish woman to Tilly. Brangwen stood by and let be.
“Then, thank you very much,” she said.
“Bring your little girl down sometime to look at th’ fowls and horses,” he said,—“if she’d like it.”
“Yes, she would like it,” said the stranger.
And she went. Brangwen stood dimmed by her departure. He could not notice Tilly, who was looking at him uneasily, wanting to be reassured. He could not think of anything. He felt that he had made some invisible connection with the strange woman.