“And isn’t he married?”

“He was. But his wife went off with⁠ ⁠… with various men⁠ ⁠… but finally with a collier at Stacks Gate, and I believe she’s living there still.”

“So this man is alone?”

“More or less! He has a mother in the village⁠ ⁠… and a child, I believe.”

Clifford looked at Connie, with his pale, slightly prominent blue eyes, in which a certain vagueness was coming. He seemed alert in the foreground, but the background was like the Midlands atmosphere, haze, smoky mist. And the haze seemed to be creeping forward. So when he stared at Connie in his peculiar way, giving her his peculiar, precise information, she felt all the background of his mind filling up with mist, with nothingness. And it frightened her. It made him seem impersonal, almost to idiocy.