Supper was a quiet meal. Old Jury and his invalid wife sat at each end of the table, while Alice did most of the helping and waiting. They seemed a sorry three to Reuben, pale, washed out, and weakly, their eyes bright as birds\' with the factitious light of their enthusiasms for things that did not matter. They ate without much appetite, picking daintily at their food, their knives never in their mouths. Reuben found himself despising them as he despised the Bardons.

Rose did not talk much, but she ate heartily—she must be as healthy as she looked. Once or twice during the meal Reuben caught himself staring at her lips—they were extraordinarily red, and at the end of the meal the juice of her pudding had stained them purple.

She said that she must leave directly after supper. Alice fetched her hat, which was not the kind that Reuben had ever seen on country girls, being of the fashionable pork-pie shape. All her clothes were obviously town-made; she wore a blue stuff dress, tight-fitting round her bust and shoulders, full and flounced in the skirt—afterwards he heard that Rose had spent some years with relations in London before coming to live at Starvecrow.

He gave her his arm, said good-bye to Alice in the doorway, and went through the little garden where flowers crowded out vegetables in a very unbusiness-like way, into the lane which wound past Cheat Land and round the hanger of Boarzell, to the farms of the Brede Valley.

Rose, a little to his surprise, began to chatter volubly. She talked very much like a child, with na?ve comments, about simple things. She asked trivial questions, and screamed with delight when some dusk-blinded bird flew against her breast and dashed down heavily into[Pg 247] the ruts. She exclaimed at the crimson moon which rose behind the hedge like a hot penny—she laughed at the slightest provocation; and yet all the while he was conscious of an underlayer of shrewdness, he had an extraordinary conviction of experience.

Besides, while she laughed and babbled like a child, her eyes continually rose towards his with a woman\'s calculated boldness. They spoke something quite different from her lips—the combination was maddening; and those lips, too, in their rare silences, were so unlike the words they uttered that he scarcely knew whether he wanted most to silence them completely or never let them be silent.

"I don\'t like Alice Jury," she prattled, "she says just the opposite of what you say. She never lets herself agree with anyone. She\'s a contradictious female."

Then suddenly she was silent—and Reuben kissed her.

He crooked his arm round her and held her close to him, standing there in the lane. Her lips slowly parted under his, then suddenly she threw her head back in a kind of ecstasy, giving him the white expanse of her neck, which he kissed, giddy with a soft fragrance that rose from her clothes, reminding him a little of clover.

She was so obviously and na?vely delighted, that when he drew himself up, his idea of her was again one of extreme childishness. And yet it was evident that she was used to kisses, and that he had kissed her at her own unspoken invitation.

They walked on down the lane. Rose\'s chatter had ceased, and a complete silence dropped between the hedges. The moon had risen higher, and the western hazels were bloomed with light. The moon was no longer crimson in the dark sky, but had burnt down to copper, casting a copper glow into the mists, staining all the blues that melted into one another along the hills. Only the middle of the lane was black—like a well. Reuben[Pg 248] and Rose could see each other\'s faces in a kind of rusty glimmer, but their feet stumbled in the darkness, and her hand lay clutching and heavy on his arm.

At last they came to Castweasel—three old cottages and a ruined one, leaning together in a hollow like mushrooms. Beside the ruined cottage a tree-tr............