'Well, sure enow,' she said, still speaking loudly, ''ere's somethin' awful queer, ye says yer a man that's got larning more ner parson, an' ye sees somethin', an' can't tell what ye's seed. That's twice this short while; are ye often took bad the like o' that?'
The bold derision of this speech fell without effect upon its object, because he perceived a gleam of mischievous intelligence in her eyes which she had intended to conceal, but she was no adept in the art of concealment. The conviction that the woman knew perfectly what he had seen and did not in reality despise him for his conduct, took the sting from her jeers but did not make his position pleasanter. The repeated shock to his nerves had produced a chilly feeling of depression and almost fear, which he could not immediately shake off, and he stood back against the opposite hedge, with his half-eaten bread in his hand, conscious that he looked and felt more like a whipped schoolboy than, as he had fondly imagined when he first stopped the woman, the hero of a rural love scene. That was nothing; he was, as he had described himself, a man who devoted his life to the search for knowledge, and personal consciousness was almost lost in the intense curiosity which the circumstances had aroused in him. With the trained mind of one accustomed to investigation, he instantly perceived that his only clue to the explanation of the phenomenon lay in the personality of the woman. His one eager desire was to probe her thought through and through, but how was he to approach the interior portals of a mind guarded by a will as free and strong as his own? He would fain have bound down her will with strong cords and analysed the secrets of her mind with ruthless vivisection. But how? His tact, trained by all the subtleties of a life cast in cultured social relations, was unequal to the occasion, and, fearing to lose ground by a false step, he remained silent.
The woman finished eating and shook herself free of the crumbs. He supposed, almost with a sense of desperation, that she was about to leave him before he could begin his inquiry, but instead of moving she motioned him to come near, and he went, and stood on the road in front of her.
'Ye says yer a man o' larning, an' I b'lieves ye, she began.
He was about to reply that he was only a seeker after truth, but he was checked by the knowledge that she would accept no answer she could not understand. He fell back on the truth as it was to her, and said simply, 'Yes.'
'I wants to ask ye two questions; will ye answer like an honest man?'
She had laid aside all her loud rudeness, and was speaking with intense earnestness—an earnestness that won his entire respect.
'I will indeed answer you honestly, if I can answer.'
'Then tell me this—What's the soäl o' a man?'
He stood with lips sealed, partly by surprise at the question, and partly by self-acknowledged ignorance of the answer.