e, shallow-set grey eyes,
which he kept fixedly on her face, she could learn nothing. In any case
she must take his arm, or she would fall. She even found herself
shrinking towards his pulpy body as he pushed open the door, because she
was afraid the people inside might not welcome her. She did not know the
Cliffes, for they were Canewdon people who had moved here four or five
years back, when Grandmother was too old and she was too young to make
friends with a young married woman. But its trim garden, where on golden
summer evenings she had seen the blind man clipping the hedge, his
clouded face shyly proud at such a victory over his affliction, while
his wife stood by and smiled, half at his pleasure and half at her own
loveliness, and the windows, lit rosily at night, had often set Marion
wishing that Harry and she were properly married. Because she had
received the impression that this was a happy home, she was uneasy, for
of late she had learned that happy people hate the unhappy. But the
shaft of sunlight that traversed the parlour into which they stepped was
as thickly inhabited with dancing motes as if they were stepping into
some vacated house given over to decay. There was dust everywhere, and
the grandfather clock had stopped, and the peonies in the vase on the
table had died yesterday; and the woman who stood in the middle of the
room, looking down at her hands and turning her wedding ring on her
finger, was not pretty or joyous. Her face was a smudge of sullenness
under hair that was elaborately dressed yet was dull for lack of
brushing, and her body drooped within the stiff tower of her
thickly-boned Sunday-best dress. She looked at Marion without curiosity
from an immense distance of preoccupation. There came from a room at the
back of the house the strains of "Nearer, my God, to Thee," played on
the harmonium, and at that she made a weak, abstracted gesture of
irritation.

"Go and get a basin of water and a bit o' rag. The girl's head's
bleeding," said Peacey, and she went out of the room obediently. He
collected all the cushions in the room and piled them on the horsehair
sofa, and helped her to lie comfortably down on them. Then he walked to
the window, and stood there looking out until Mrs. Cliffe came back into
the room. He took the basin without thanks, and set it down on a chair
and began to bathe Marion's head, while Mrs. Cliffe stood by watching
incuriously.

"Now then, Trixy," he said, not unp