"Yes."
Last night, lying awake in the dark, she had tried to think. She had thought of shoulders heaving over her, of arms holding her, of a face looking into hers, a honey-white, beardless face, blue eyes, black eyebrows drawn close down on to the blue. Jimmy's face, not Maurice Jourdain's.
That was in September. October passed. She began to wonder when he would come again.
He came on the last day of November.
X.
"Maurice, you're keeping something from me. Something's happened.
Something's made you unhappy."
"Yes. Something's made me unhappy."
The Garthdale road. Before them, on the rise, the white highway showed like a sickle curving into the moor. At the horn of the sickle a tall ash tree in the wall of the Aldersons' farm. Where the road dipped they turned.
He slouched slowly, his head hung forward, loosening the fold of flesh about his jaw. His eyes blinked in the soft November sunshine. His eyelids were tight as though they had been tied with string.
"Supposing I asked you to release me from our engagement?"