tainly thought she had heard this ironic
respectfulness, and she had stared after him with a sudden dread that
under the cream of benignity there might after all be a ferment of
malign intention. But that gait, which was so light and brisk for such a
heavy man, had already taken him some distance from her, and he was now
entering the yew alley that was the private way from Torque Hall to the
churchyard. The sunlight falling through the interstices of the dark
mossy trees cast liver-coloured patches on his black coat. She had
turned and looked down, as she always did when human complexities made
her seek reassurance as to the worth of this world, on the shiny
mud-flats, blue-veined with the running tides, and green marshes where
the redshanks choired. Her misgiving had weakened at that beauty, for
with the logic of the young she thought that if the universe was
infinitely good it could not also be infinitely evil, and it had been
utterly dispelled by his considerate conduct during the following weeks.

He did not try to see her at all until a day or two before the birth of
her child was expected. Then he came at twilight. He would not let
Grandmother put a match to the lamp in the parlour, and Marion knew from
his quiet urgency that he was doing this so that she might continue to
wear the dusk as a cloak. He sat down by the window, his shoulders black
against the sunset, and his fat hands, with their appealing air of shame
at their own fatness, laid on the little table beside him an old; carved
coral rattle and a baby's dress precious with embroideries. These he had
bought, he said, up in London, where he had had to go for a day to do
business with the wine merchants. He had not seemed to listen to her
thanks. But his hunched shape against the primrose light and the
gleaming of his thick white fingers playing nervously with the fragile
gifts spoke of a passionate concern for her. No doubt that concern was
sincere. They told her after her confinement that during the day and
night through which her child was slowly torn from her he had not left
the house, and at her cries a sweat had run down his face. That was not
unnatural. An incomplete villainy would vex its designer as any
unfinished work of art vexes the artist. But she interpreted it in the
sense that he, knowing what delusions youth has regarding the human
capacity for love, had foreseen that she would.

She let him see her before anyone else, and he had made the m