Her eyes were on him all the time, wide-open and trying to grasp him. He felt that he was there for her.

“It is your own place, the house, the farm — — ?”

“Yes,” he said. He looked down at her and met her look. It disturbed her. She did not know him. He was a foreigner, they had nothing to do with each other. Yet his look disturbed her to knowledge of him. He was so strangely confident and direct.

“You live quite alone?”

“Yes — if you call it alone?”

She did not understand.

It seemed unusual to her. What was the meaning of it?

And whenever her eyes,