wide mouth, curiously
held. He saw her face clearly, as if by a light in the air. He
saw her face so distinctly, that he ceased to coil on himself,
and was suspended.

"That's her," he said involuntarily. As the cart passed by,
splashing through the thin mud, she stood back against the bank.
Then, as he walked still beside his britching horse, his eyes
met hers. He looked quickly away, pressing back his head, a pain
of joy running through him. He could not bear to think of
anything.

He turned round at the last moment. He saw her bonnet, her
shape in the black cloak, the movement as she walked. Then she
was gone round the bend.

She had passed by. He felt as if he were walking again in a
far world, not Cossethay, a far world, the fragile reality. He
went on, quiet, suspended, rarefied. He could not bear to think
or to speak, nor make any sound or sign, nor change his fixed
motion. He could scarcely bear to think of her face. He moved
within the knowledge of her, in the world that was beyond
reality.

The feeling that they had exchanged recognition possessed him
like a madness, like a torment. How could he be sure, what
confirmation had he? The doubt was like a sense of infinite
space, a nothingness, annihilating. He kept within his breast
the will to surety. They had exchanged recognition.

He walked about in this state for the next few days. And then
again like a mist it began to break to let through the common,
barren world. He was very gentle with man and beast, but he
dreaded the starkness of disillusion cropping through again.

As he was standing with his back to the fire after dinner a
few days later, he saw the woman passing. He wanted to know that
she knew him, that she was aware. He wanted it said that there
was something between them. So he stood anxiously watching,
looking at her as she went down the road. He called to
Tilly.

"Who might that be?" he asked.

Tilly, the cross-eyed woman of forty, who adored him, ran
gladly to the window to look. She was glad when he asked her for
anything. She craned her head over the short curtain, the little
tight knob of her black hair sticking out pathetically as she
bobbed about.

"Oh why"--she lifted her head and peered with her
twisted, keen brown eyes--"why, you know who it
is--it's her from th' vicarage--you know--"

"How do I know, you hen-bird," he shouted.

Tilly blushed and drew her neck in and looked at him with her
squinting, sharp, almost r