I got up in silence, and walked by her side out of the churchyard towards her father’s cottage, which was situated between the new church and the old, and at a considerable distance from the town of Raxton on one side, and the village of Graylingham on the other.  Her eager young limbs would every moment take her ahead of me, for she was as vigorous as a fawn.  But by the time she was half a yard in advance, she would recollect herself and fall back; and every time she did so that same look of tenderness would overspread her face.

At last she said, ‘What makes you stare at me so, little boy?’

I blushed and turned my head another way, for I had been feasting my eyes upon her complexion, and trying to satisfy myself as to what it really was like.  Indeed, I thought it quite peculiar then, when I had seen so few lovely faces, as I always did afterwards, when I had seen as many as most people.  It was, I thought, as though underneath the sunburn the delicate pink tint of the hedge-rose had become mingled with the bloom of a ripening peach, and yet it was like neither peach nor rose.  But this tone, whatever it was, did not spread higher than the eyebrows.  The forehead was different.  It had a singular kind of pearly look, and her long slender throat was almost of the same tone:  no, not the same, for there was a transparency about her throat unlike that of the forehead.  This colour I was just now thinking looked something like the inside of a certain mysterious shell upon my father’s library shelf.

As she asked me her question she stopped, and looked straight at me, opening her eyes wide and round upon me.  This threw a look of innocent trustfulness over her bright features which I soon learnt was the chief characteristic of her expression and was altogether peculiar to herself.  I knew it was very rude to stare at people as I had been staring at her, and I took her question as a rebuke, although I still was unable to keep my eyes off her.  But it was not merely her beauty and her tenderness that had absorbed my attention.  I had been noticing how intensely she seemed to enjoy the delights of that summer afternoon.  As we passed along that road, where sea-scents and land-scents were mingled, she would stop whenever the sunshine fell full upon her face; her eyes would sparkle and widen with pleasure, and a half-smile would play about her lips, as if some one had kissed her.  Every now and then she would stop to listen to the birds, putting up her finger, and with a look of childish wisdom say, ’Do you know what that is?  That’s a blackbird—­that’s a thrush—­that’s a goldfinch.  Which eggs do you like best—­a goldfinch’s or a bullfinch’s? I know which I like best.’

III

While we were walking along the road a sound fell upon my ears which in my hale days never produced any very unpleasant sensations, but which did now.  I mean the cackling of the field people of both sexes returning from their day’s work.  These people knew me well, and they liked me, and I am sure they had no idea that when they ran past me on the road their looks and nods gave me no pleasure, but pain; and I always tried to avoid them.  As they passed us they somewhat modified the noise they were making, but only to cackle, chatter, and bawl and laugh at each other the louder after we were left behind.