Slender, quiet and quick, the man finished the coop he was making, turned it over, tried the sliding door, then set it aside. Then he rose, went for an old coop, and took it to the chopping log where he was working. Crouching, he tried the bars; some broke in his hands; he began to draw the nails. Then he turned the coop over and deliberated, and he gave absolutely no sign of awareness of the woman’s presence.

So Connie watched him fixedly. And the same solitary aloneness she had seen in him naked, she now saw in him clothed: solitary, and intent, like an animal that works alone, but also brooding, like a soul that recoils away, away from all human contact. Silently, patiently, he was recoiling away from her even now. It was the stillness, and the timeless sort of patience, in a man impatient and passionate, that touched Connie’s womb. She saw it in his bent head, the quick quiet hands, the crouching of his slender, sensitive loins; something patient and withdrawn. She felt his experience had been deeper and wider than her own; much deeper and wider, and perhaps more deadly. And this relieved her of herself; she felt almost irresponsible.

So she sat in the doorway of the hut in a dream, utterly unaware of time and of particular circumstances. She was so drifted away that he glanced up at her quickly, and saw the utterly still, waiting look on her face. To him it was a look of waiting. And a little thin tongue of fire suddenly flickered in his loins, at the root of his back, and he groaned in spirit. He dreaded with a repulsion almost of death, any further close human contact. He wished above all things she would go away, and leave him to his own privacy. He dreaded her will, her female will, and her modern female insistency. And above all he dreaded her cool, upper–class impudence of having her own way. For after all he was only a hired man. He hated her presence there.

Connie came to herself with sudden uneasiness. She rose. The afternoon was turning to evening, yet she could not go away. She went over to the man, who stood up at attention, his worn face stiff and blank, his eyes watching her.

‘It is so nice here, so restful,’ she said. ‘I have never been here before.’

‘No?’

‘I think I shall come and sit here sometimes.

‘Yes?’

‘Do you lock the hut when you’re not here?’

‘Yes, your Ladyship.’

‘Do you think I could have a key too, so that I could sit here sometimes? Are there two keys?’

‘Not as Ah know on, ther’ isna.’

He had lapsed into the vernacular. Connie hesitated; he was putting up an opposition. Was it his hut, after all?

‘Couldn’t we get another key?’ she asked in her soft voice, that underneath had the ring of a woman determined to get her way.

‘Another!’ he said, glancing at her with a flash of anger, touched with derision.

‘Yes, a duplicate,’ she said, flushing.

‘‘Appen Sir Clifford ‘ud know,’ he said, putting her off.