“You'd better marry her.” But still he took no notice. Things were as they were.

Another day, at tea-time, as he sat alone at table, there came a knock at the front door. It startled him like a portent. No one ever knocked at the front door.

He rose and began slotting back the bolts, turning the big key. When he had opened the door, the strange woman stood on the threshold.

“Can you give me a pound of butter?” she asked, in a curious detached way of one speaking a foreign language.

He tried to attend to her question. She was looking at him questioningly. But underneath the question, what was there, in her very standing motionless, which affected him?

He stepped