lined."

"He is quite an unusual man."

He looked at her in amazement. She evidently had a new idea
of his brother: she evidently appreciated him. He looked again
at the woman. She was about forty, straight, rather hard, a
curious, separate creature. Himself, he was not in love with
her, there was something chilling about her. But he was filled
with boundless admiration.

At tea-time he was introduced to her father, an invalid who
had to be helped about, but who was ruddy and well-favoured,
with snowy hair and watery blue eyes, and a courtly naive manner
that again was new and strange to Brangwen, so suave, so merry,
so innocent.

His brother was this woman's lover! It was too amazing.
Brangwen went home despising himself for his own poor way of
life. He was a clod-hopper and a boor, dull, stuck in the mud.
More than ever he wanted to clamber out, to this visionary
polite world.

He was well off. He was as well off as Alfred, who could not
have above six hundred a year, all told. He himself made about
four hundred, and could make more. His investments got better
every day. Why did he not do something? His wife was a lady
also.

But when he got to the Marsh, he realized how fixed
everything was, how the other form of life was beyond him, and
he regretted for the first time that he had succeeded to the
farm. He felt a prisoner, sitting safe and easy and
unadventurous. He might, with risk, have done more with himself.
He could neither read Browning nor Herbert Spencer, nor have
access to such a room as Mrs. Forbes's. All that form of life
was outside him.

But then, he said he did not want it. The excitement of the
visit began to pass off. The next day he was himself, and if he
thought of the other woman, there was something about her and
her place that he did not like, something cold something alien,
as if she were not a woman, but an inhuman being who used up
human life for cold, unliving purposes.

The evening came on, he played with Anna, and then sat alone
with his own wife. She was sewing. He sat very still, smoking,
perturbed. He was aware of his wife's quiet figure, and quiet
dark head bent over her needle. It was too quiet for him. It was
too peaceful. He wanted to smash the walls down, and let the
night in, so that his wife should not be so secure and quiet,
sitting there. He wished the air were not so close and narrow.
His wife was obliterated from him, she was in her own world,
quiet, secure, un