ht she heard them speak of love
and then of marriage. Raising herself and sitting up, she too realised
Helen's soft body, the strong and hospitable arms, and happiness
swelling and breaking in one vast wave. When this fell away, and the
grasses once more lay low, and the sky became horizontal, and the earth
rolled out flat on each side, and the trees stood upright, she was the
first to perceive a little row of human figures standing patiently in
the distance. For the moment she could not remember who they were.

"Who are they?" she asked, and then recollected.

Falling into line behind Mr. Flushing, they were careful to leave at
least three yards' distance between the toe of his boot and the rim of
her skirt.

He led them across a stretch of green by the river-bank and then through
a grove of trees, and bade them remark the signs of human habitation,
the blackened grass, the charred tree-stumps, and there, through the
trees, strange wooden nests, drawn together in an arch where the trees
drew apart, the village which was the goal of their journey.

Stepping cautiously, they observed the women, who were squatting on the
ground in triangular shapes, moving their hands, either plaiting straw
or in kneading something in bowls. But when they had looked for a moment
undiscovered, they were seen, and Mr. Flushing, advancing into the
centre of the clearing, was engaged in talk with a lean majestic man,
whose bones and hollows at once made the shapes of the Englishman's body
appear ugly and unnatural. The women took no notice of the strangers,
except that their hands paused for a moment and their long narrow eyes
slid round and fixed upon them with the motionless inexpensive gaze of
those removed from each other far far beyond the plunge of speech. Their
hands moved again, but the stare continued. It followed them as they
walked, as they peered into the huts where they could distinguish guns
leaning in the corner, and bowls upon the floor, and stacks of rushes;
in the dusk the solemn eyes of babies regarded them, and old women
stared out too. As they sauntered about, the stare followed them,
passing over their legs, their bodies, their heads, curiously not
without hostility, like the crawl of a winter fly. As she drew apart her
shawl and uncovered her breast to the lips of her baby, the eyes of a
woman never left their faces, although they moved uneasily under her
stare, and finally turned away, rather than stand there lookin