th that momentary humility which
makes a man lord of the earth.

I stood in the road, looking at the fluffy, dark-red young cattle that
mooed and seemed to bark at me. They seemed happy, frisky cattle, a
little impudent, and either determined to go back into the warm shed, or
determined not to go back. I could not decide which.

Presently the woman came forward again, her head rather ducked. But she
looked up at me and smiled, with that odd, immediate intimacy, something
witch-like and impossible.

"Sorry to keep you waiting," she said. "Shall we stand in this
cart-shed--it will be more out of the wind."

So we stood among the shafts of the open cart-shed, that faced the road.
Then she looked down at the ground, a little sideways, and I noticed a
small black frown on her brows. She seemed to brood for a moment. Then
she looked straight into my eyes, so that I blinked and wanted to turn
my face aside. She was searching me for something and her look was too
near. The frown was still on her keen, sallow brow.

"Can you speak French?" she asked me abruptly.

"More or less," I replied.

"I was supposed to learn it at school," she said. "But I don't know a
word." She ducked her head and laughed, with a slightly ugly grimace and
a rolling of her black eyes.

"No good keeping your mind full of scraps," I answered.

But she had turned aside her sallow, long face, and did not hear what
I said. Suddenly again she looked at me. She was searching. And at the
same time she smiled at me, and her eyes looked softly, darkly, with
infinite trustful humility into mine. I was being cajoled.

"Would you mind reading a letter for me, in French?" she said, her face
immediately black and bitter-looking. She glanced at me, frowning.

"Not at all," I said.

"It's a letter to my husband," she said, still scrutinising.

I looked at her, and didn't quite realise. She looked too far into me,
my wits were gone. She glanced round. Then she looked at me shrewdly.
She drew a letter from her pocket, and handed it to me. It was addressed
from France to M. Alfred Goyte, at Tible. I took out the letter and
began to read it, as mere words. "Mon cher Alfred"--it might have been a
bit of a torn newspaper. So I followed the script: the trite phrases of
a letter from a French-speaking girl to an Englishman. "I think of
you always, always. Do you think sometimes of me?" And then I vaguely
realised that I was reading a man's private correspondence.