Backwards and forwards in her mind that ceaseless questioning tossed her from hope to despair.
"Why has he come? To see me?"
"Who are you that he should want to see you?"
Up the passage she heard John kicking off his boots. He called to her from the foot of the stairs.
"You're a long time, honey. Ain't you finished yet?"
"Coming in a minute," she replied.
The water in the basin was cold. Yellow islands of congealing grease floated on its unlovely surface. She emptied it away and turned to the kettle for more.
It was a nuisance, this thing which took possession of her thoughts and made her forget the water in the basin. No one had a right to claim so much of her time, she on whose personality rested the well-being of a whole village.
Angrily she wrung out the dish-cloth and hung it on a nail, yet, as she walked up the passage with a queer revulsion of feeling she found herself humming a tune, gay and elated as she had not been for weeks. For he was in the village. She might see him to-morrow. To-morrow anything might happen.
But afterwards in the dining-room sitting over her sewing and listening to the ticking clock and the regular breathing of John who had fallen asleep over his paper, her mood changed again. What was the use of thinking about to-morrow, when she wanted him so much to-night?