The good woman considered for a moment.
"Well, I sha'n't tell him," she announced finally.
Harding drove to the nearest station in a gig. The rain was not so heavy then, the downpour had become a persistent drizzle. Nevertheless the village looked drenched and dismal enough as he bade it good-bye, and swung round the corner of the churchyard wall, where the yellow weeds stood up in the crevices behind the slant grey veil, and the great black-plumaged yews let fall their heavy tears upon the graves. In another minute a clump of trees hid the square tower and the leaden roof, and Mitchelhurst was left behind. But the young man looked right and left at the wet hedgerows till they reached a spot where a ploughed field rose above the bank on one side, while on the other a deep bramble-grown ditch divided the road from the sodden meadows. He fixed his eyes on that. It was exactly a week that Wednesday since he first met Barbara Strange.
Late that afternoon he walked into a dull room in a dull suburb of London, and a woman who stood in the window, snipping the dead fronds from a homesick-looking fern, turned to meet him. There was no mistaking the relationship. Allowing for the differences of sex and age, they were as like as they could possibly be, except that in every glance and gesture the woman showed a fuller and richer life than did the man. There was something of imperious grace in her movements which made him seem awkward, hesitating, and constrained. She suffered him to touch her cheek with his lips, but showed no inclination to speak first.
"Back again, you see," he said, drawing a chair to the hearth-rug.
"Yes. I should think you must be wet."
"Damp, I suppose."
He glanced round the room. The flock paper, the red curtains, the grimy windows, the smoky fire, had the strange novelty which the most familiar things will sometimes put on. The atmosphere was loaded with acrid fog, and the blackness of the great city. He raised his foot and warmed a muddy boot, while his thoughts went back to the stateliness and airy purity of the old manor house, where the great logs cracked and glowed upon the hearths.
Mrs. Harding came and rested her elbow on the chimney-piece, looking down at her son.