a son, the Baron Skrebensky
was loud with delight.

Gradually she gathered a circle of acquaintances in the
county. For she was of good family, half Venetian, educated in
Dresden. The little foreign vicar attained to a social status
which almost satisfied his maddened pride.

Therefore the Brangwens were surprised when the invitation
came for Anna and her young husband to pay a visit to Briswell
vicarage. For the Skrebenskys were now moderately well off,
Millicent Skrebensky having some fortune of her own.

Anna took her best clothes, recovered her best high-school
manner, and arrived with her husband. Will Brangwen, ruddy,
bright, with long limbs and a small head, like some uncouth
bird, was not changed in the least. The little Baroness was
smiling, showing her teeth. She had a real charm, a kind of
joyous coldness, laughing, delighted, like some weasel. Anna at
once respected her, and was on her guard before her,
instinctively attracted by the strange, childlike surety of the
Baroness, yet mistrusting it, fascinated. The little baron was
now quite white-haired, very brittle. He was wizened and
wrinkled, yet fiery, unsubdued. Anna looked at his lean body, at
his small, fine lean legs and lean hands as he sat talking, and
she flushed. She recognized the quality of the male in him, his
lean, concentrated age, his informed fire, his faculty for
sharp, deliberate response. He was so detached, so purely
objective. A woman was thoroughly outside him. There was no
confusion. So he could give that fine, deliberate response.

He was something separate and interesting; his hard,
intrinsic being, whittled down by age to an essentiality and a
directness almost death-like, cruel, was yet so unswervingly
sure in its action, so distinct in its surety, that she was
attracted to him. She watched his cool, hard, separate fire,
fascinated by it. Would she rather have it than her husband's
diffuse heat, than his blind, hot youth?

She seemed to be breathing high, sharp air, as if she had
just come out of a hot room. These strange Skrebenskys made her
aware of another, freer element, in which each person was
detached and isolated. Was not this her natural element? Was not
the close Brangwen life stifling her?

Meanwhile the little baroness, with always a subtle light
stirring of her full, lustrous, hazel eyes, was playing with
Will Brangwen. He was not quick enough to see all her movements.
Yet he watched her steadily, with unch