She sat in Rowcliffe's chair before his fire and drank his
tea and ate his hot griddle-cakes (she had a healthy appetite, being
young and strong). She talked to him as if she had known him a long
time. All these things he made her do, and when he talked to her he
made her forget what had brought her there; he made her forget Alice
and Mary and her father.
When he left her for a moment she got up, restless and eager to be
gone. And when he came back to her she was standing by the open window
again, looking at the orchard.
Rowcliffe looked at _her_, taking in her tallness, her slenderness,
the lithe and beautiful line of her body, curved slightly backward as
she leaned against the window wall.
Never before and never again, afterwards, never, that was to say, for
any other woman, did Rowcliffe feel what he felt then. Looking back on
it (afterward) he could only describe it as a sense of certainty. It
lacked, surprisingly, the element of surprise.
"You like my north-country orchard?" (He was certain that she did.)
She turned, smiling. "I like it very much."
They had been a long time over tea. It was half-past five before they
started. He brought an overcoat and put it on her. He wrapped a rug
round her knees and feet and tucked it well in.
"You don't like rugs," he said (he knew she didn't), "but you've got
to have it."
She did like it. She liked his rug and his overcoat, and his little
brown horse with the clanking hoofs.
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