“Sorry to keep you waiting,” she said. “Shall we stand in this cart-shed—it will be more out of the wind.”
So we stood among the shafts of the open cart-shed, that faced the road. Then she looked down at the ground, a little sideways, and I noticed a small black frown on her brows. She seemed to brood for a moment. Then she looked straight into my eyes, so that I blinked and wanted to turn my face aside. She was searching me for something and her look was too near. The frown was still on her keen, sallow brow.
“Can you speak French?” she asked me abruptly.
“More or less,” I replied.
“I was supposed to learn it at school,” she said. “But I don't know a word.” She ducked her head and laughed, with a slightly ugly grimace and a rolling of her black eyes.
“No good keeping your mind full of scraps,” I answered.
But she had turned aside her sallow, long face, and did not hear what I said. Suddenly again she looked at me. She was searching. And at the same time she smiled at me, and her eyes looked softly, darkly, with infinite trustful humility into mine. I was being cajoled.
“Would you mind reading a letter for me, in French?” she said, her face immediately black and bitter-looking. She glanced at me, frowning.
“Not at all,” I said.
“It's a letter to my husband,” she said, still scrutinising.