"I ain't come for no friendly call," muttered Jude, slouching in and dropping on to a wooden chair beside the table.
Joyce turned and looked at him, and the glow from the hanging lamp fell upon her.
She was tall and slim, almost to leanness, but there were no awkward angles and she was as graceful as a fawn.
Her skin was pale, clear and smooth, her eyes wide apart and so dark as to be colourless, but of a wondrous softness. Her hair was of that shade of gold that suggests silver, and in its curves, where the sun had not bleached it, it was full of tints and tones.
"What have you come for?" she asked, as a child might have asked it, wonderingly and interestedly.
"I want to ask you something, and I want the truth."
"Oh!" Joyce sat opposite, and let her clasped hands fall upon the table laid out for the evening meal with the brown bowl of early asters set in the centre. She forgot her hunger, and the steaming pot on the stove bubbled unheeded.
"What you want to know, Jude? You look mighty upset."
Jude saw with his new, keen vision that she was startled and was sparring for time. "It's about," he leaned forward, "it's about you and—and him. I saw you in the Long Medder. I saw him hold your hands and—and kiss you." The words smarted the dry, hot lips. "I—I want to know what it means."
Jude was trembling visibly as he finished, but Joyce's silence, her apparent discomfort, gave him a kind of assurance that upheld him in his position.