“Injoy theeself like the wheel at the cistern, be my text, Mr. Redfern, I beg pardon, Mr. Solent. The Lord gives beef, but us must go to the Devil for sauce, as my granddad used to murmur. I warrant this meat were well fed and well killed, as you might say. ’Tain’t always so wi’ they Darset farmers.”

Wolf listened in silence to these and other similar remarks while he ate his meal. He was so close to Gerda that he could catch the faint susurration of her deep, even breathing.

“I’m glad she doesn’t speak,” he thought to himself, in that sensualized level of consciousness which is just below the threshold of mental words; “for unless I could talk to her alone⁠—”