"Now you can push it through yourself; I hope it won't hurt much."
Taking the hook, I push it through, and a drop of blood follows it. "Oh!" she cries, but I assure her it is nothing, and stick the hook surreptitiously in my coat sleeve. Then we both laugh, and I look at her for the first time. She has a very white forehead, with little tendrils of hair blowing round it under her gray cap; her eyes are gray (I didn't see that then,—I only saw they were steady, smiling eyes, that matched her mouth). Such a mouth! the most maddening mouth a man ever longed to kiss, above a too pointed chin, soft as a child's; indeed, the whole face looks soft in the misty light.
"I am sorry I spoilt your sport!" I say.
"Oh, that don't matter, it's time to stop. I got two brace, one a beauty."
She is winding in her line, and I look in her basket; they are beauties, one two-pounder, the rest running from a half to a pound.
"What fly?"
"Yellow dun took that one; but your assailant was a partridge spider."
I sling her basket over my shoulder; she takes it as a matter of course, and we retrace our steps. I feel curiously happy as we walk toward the road; there is a novel delight in her nearness. The feel of woman works subtilely and strangely in me; the rustle of her skirt as it brushes the black-heads in the meadow-grass, and the delicate perfume, partly violets, partly herself, that comes to me with each of her movements, is a rare pleasure. I am hardly surprised when she turns into the garden of the inn; I think I knew from the first that she would.
"Better bathe that ear of yours, and put a few drops of carbolic in the water." She takes the basket as she says it, and goes into the kitchen.
I hurry over this, and go into the little sitting-room. There is a tray, with a glass of milk and some oaten cakes, upon the table. I am too disturbed to sit down; I stand at the window and watch the bats flitter in the gathering moonlight, and listen with quivering nerves for her step; perhaps she will send for the tray, and not come after all. What a fool I am to be disturbed by a gray-clad witch with a tantalizing mouth! That comes of loafing about doing nothing. I mentally darn the old fool who saved her money instead of spending it. Why the devil should I be bothered? I don't want it anyhow. She comes in as I fume, and I forget everything at her entrance. I push the arm-chair toward the table, and she sinks quietly into it, pulling the tray nearer. She has a wedding-ring on; but somehow it never strikes me to wonder if she is married or a widow, or who she may be. I am content to watch her break her biscuit; she has the prettiest hands, and a trick of separating her last fingers when she takes hold of anything: they remind me of white orchids I saw somewhere. She led me to talk,—about Africa, I think. I liked to watch her eyes glow deeply in the shadow and then catch light as she bent forward to say something in her quick responsive way.