A villager was approaching.
He saw the man marching towards him as on the screen of a cinema.
The man said good evening.
Ernie answered, and found himself listening with interest to his own voice. It sounded so loud and alien.
He was a puppet in a play, watching his own performance—actor and audience in one.
Except for a certain diffused physical discomfort on the remote circumference of his being, he was not happy or unhappy. He was a headache, and that was all he was. But he was a headache which could walk and if necessary talk.
Then, still obeying his unseen guide, he turned off the dusty road into the wood upon his left that stretched across the Brooks down towards the stream.
On the fringe of the wood he was bidden to stay....
The river ran in front of him a few yards away. On the other bank, immediately opposite him, was a clump of willows. There too was a big young woman in a tan overall.
She was sitting on the tow-path, her back against a tree, her arms bound about her knees, her feet in heavy boots pressed close together in an attitude expressing doggedness. She was bare-headed; and her orange turban lay at her feet. Ernie marked her gypsy colouring, red and gold, and the yellow necklace that bound her throat. The sullen expression of her face was enhanced by the gleam of teeth which her lips, drawn back almost to a snarl, revealed.