His obscure distress swathed every one of the thrush’s notes with a thick soot-coloured wrapping, so that they flapped at him like so many black flags. On the gusts of hedge-scent and ditch-scent his discomfort rose and fell, rocking him up and down in swart desolation.

“I wish I’d gone straight up to her at the window just now,” he said to himself. “I can’t bear to have her looking like that. Christ saw a man under a fig-tree, or whatever it was; and I suppose a girl can see a man under a lime-tree and read his thoughts like a map!”

He threw off his gloom as well as he could, and walked slowly into the kitchen. There he found her absentmindedly laying the table for a meal of bread and cheese. He mechanically started helping her, getting out the knives and forks from the dresser-drawer and uncorking a bottle of beer.

When the meal was ready she untied her apron, removed the muslin from her head, washed her hands at the sink, and then, instead of taking her place opposite him, stood wavering and helpless in the middle of the room.