‘No,’ he said, seeing Connie stand at a loss, ‘my mother comes and cleans up for me on Saturdays; I do the rest myself.’

Again Connie looked at him. His eyes were smiling again, a little mockingly, but warm and blue, and somehow kind. She wondered at him. He was in trousers and flannel shirt and a grey tie, his hair soft and damp, his face rather pale and worn–looking. When the eyes ceased to laugh they looked as if they had suffered a great deal, still without losing their warmth. But a pallor of isolation came over him, she was not really there for him.

She wanted to say so many things, and she said nothing. Only she looked up at him again, and remarked:

‘I hope I didn’t disturb you?’

The faint smile of mockery narrowed his eyes.

‘Only combing my hair, if you don’t mind. I’m sorry I hadn’t a coat on, but then I had no idea who was knocking. Nobody knocks here, and the unexpected sounds ominous.’

He went in front of her down the garden path to hold the gate. In his shirt, without the clumsy velveteen coat, she saw again how slender he was, thin, stooping a little. Yet, as she passed him, there was something young and bright in his fair hair, and his quick eyes. He would be a man about thirty–seven or eight.

She plodded on into the wood, knowing he was looking after her; he upset her so much, in spite of herself.

And he, as he went indoors, was thinking: ‘She’s nice, she’s real! She’s nicer than she knows.’

She wondered very much about him; he seemed so unlike a game–keeper, so unlike a working–man anyhow; although he had something in common with the local people. But also something very uncommon.

‘The game–keeper, Mellors, is a curious kind of person,’ she said to Clifford; ‘he might almost be a gentleman.’

‘Might he?’ said Clifford. ‘I hadn’t noticed.’

‘But isn’t there something special about him?’ Connie insisted.

‘I think he’s quite a nice fellow, but I know very little about him. He only came out of the army last year, less than a year ago. From India, I rather think. He may have picked up certain tricks out there, perhaps he was an officer’s servant, and improved on his position. Some of the men were like that. But it does them no good, they have to fall back into their old places when they get home again.’

Connie gazed at Clifford contemplatively. She saw in him the peculiar tight rebuff against anyone of the lower classes who might be really climbing up, which she knew was characteristic of his breed.

‘But don’t you think there is something special about him?’ she asked.

‘Frankly, no! Nothing I had noticed.’

He looked at her curiously, uneasily, half–suspiciously. And she felt he wasn’t telling her the real truth; he wasn’t telling himself the real truth, that was it. He disliked any suggestion of a really exceptional human being. People must be more or less at his level, or below it.