It was afternoon, and the street was almost empty save for a shabby man walking up the hill towards them from the Star.
They did not see him, absorbed more in themselves than in each other; but he saw them and stepped into the porch of the parish-church as though to avoid them.
Just opposite the porch Edward Caspar came to himself and said good-bye with grunts.
Mrs. Lewknor looked after his heavy figure toiling laboriously up the hill.
Then her eyes caught the eyes peeping at her from the porch—eyes that possessed the same wistful quality as those of the man who had just left her side: eyes somehow familiar that were smiling at her.
"Why, Caspar!" she cried, and crossed the road.
The man left the beam against which he was leaning, and came towards her suddenly. There was a curious wan smile upon his face. He lurched, held out his hand like a child for help, and fell his length in the road.
A man from the iron-monger's shop opposite came out.
"He's out of work," he said. "He's half-starved. There's a lot the same. Funny world."
Mrs. Lewknor was horrified.