her sheer physical well being, a vague blur of pleasant sensation at her
proximity; but beyond that he felt no attraction except a careless
admiration for her endurance and dexterity in the woods, a certain
relief in the freedom of her companionship. He had never considered her
concretely as a possible source of physical pleasure. He was not easily
excited sexually, and had had few adventures with women; something of
his contempt, his indifference, removed him from that, too. His emotions
were deep, vital; and hid beneath a shyness of habit that had grown into
a suspicious reserve. All bonds were irksome to him, and instinctively
he avoided the greater with the lesser; instinctively he realized that
the admission of cloying influences, of the entanglements of sex, would
more definitely bind him than any generality of society.

It had, he thought, grown dark with amazing rapidity. He could now see a
feeble light at the Gilkans, ahead and on the right. At the same moment
a brighter, flickering radiance fell upon the road, the thick foliage of
the trees. The blast was gathering at Shadrach Furnace. A clear, almost
smokeless flame rose from the stack against the night-blue sky. It
illuminated the rectangular, stone structure of the coal-house on the
hill, and showed the wet and blackened roof of the casting shed below.
The flame dwindled and then mounted, hanging like a fabulous oriflamme
on a stillness in which Howat Penny could hear the blast forced through
the Furnace by the great leather bellows.

He turned in, over the littered ground before the Gilkan house. Fanny
was standing in the doorway, her straight, vigorous body sharp against
the glow inside. "Here's Mr. Howat Penny," she called over her shoulder.
"Is everything off the table? There's not much," she turned to him, "but
the end of the pork barrel." A meagre fire was burning in the large,
untidy hearth; battered tin ovens had been drawn aside, and a pair of