She looked up at him with a faint smile.
“You can have the barn,” she said.
His eyes answered her smile, but his tone was grave.
“I have given that up—for a little time, at any rate,” he said. “I mean that particular sort of work.”
“My villagers must content themselves with Mr. Vardon, then,” she remarked.
He nodded.
“Perhaps,” he said, “ours was a mistaken enterprise. I am not sure. But at any rate, so far as Thorpe is concerned, I have abandoned it for the present.”
She was walking close to his side, so close that the hand which raised her skirt as they crossed the street touched his, and her soft breath as she leaned over and spoke fell upon his cheek.
“Why?”
He felt the insidious meaning of her whispered monosyllable, he felt her eyes striving to make him look at her. His cheeks were flushed, but he looked steadily ahead.