s afraid of his hard, evil moments, the head dropped
a little, rigidly, in a crouching, cruel way. She was afraid of
him. He seemed to lacerate her sensitive femaleness. He seemed
to hurt her womb, to take pleasure in torturing her.

He came into the house. The sound of his footsteps in his
heavy boots filled her with horror: a hard, cruel, malignant
sound. She was afraid he would come upstairs. But he did not.
She waited apprehensively. He went out.

Where she was most vulnerable, he hurt her. Oh, where she was
delivered over to him, in her very soft femaleness, he seemed to
lacerate her and desecrate her. She pressed her hands over her
womb in anguish, whilst the tears ran down her face. And why,
and why? Why was he like this?

Suddenly she dried her tears. She must get the tea ready. She
went downstairs and set the table. When the meal was ready, she
called to him.

"I've mashed the tea, Will, are you coming?"

She herself could hear the sound of tears in her own voice,
and she began to cry again. He did not answer, but went on with
his work. She waited a few minutes, in anguish. Fear came over
her, she was panic-stricken with terror, like a child; and she
could not go home again to her father; she was held by the power
in this man who had taken her.

She turned indoors so that he should not see her tears. She
sat down to table. Presently he came into the scullery. His
movements jarred on her, as she heard them. How horrible was the
way he pumped, exacerbating, so cruel! How she hated to hear
him! How he hated her! How his hatred was like blows upon her!
The tears were coming again.

He came in, his face wooden and lifeless, fixed, persistent.
He sat down to tea, his head dropped over his cup, uglily. His
hands were red from the cold water, and there were rims of earth
in his nails. He went on with his tea.

It was his negative insensitiveness to her that she could not
bear, something clayey and ugly. His intelligence was
self-absorbed. How unnatural it was to sit with a self-absorbed
creature, like something negative ensconced opposite one.
Nothing could touch him--he could only absorb things into
his own self.

The tears were running down her face. Something startled him,
and he was looking up at her with his hateful, hard, bright
eyes, hard and unchanging as a bird of prey.

"What are you crying for?" came the grating voice.

She winced through her womb. She could not stop crying.

"What are you