in the valleys there was a duskier brown, deepening every moment.
Margret turned from the road, and went down the fields. One did
not wonder, feeling the silence of these hills and broad sweeps
of meadow, that this woman, coming down from among them, should
be strangely still, with dark questioning eyes dumb to their own
secrets.

Looking into her face now, you could be sure of one thing: that
she had left the town, the factory, the dust far away, shaken the
thought of them off her brain. No miles could measure the
distance between her home and them. At a stile across the field
an old man sat waiting. She hurried now, her cheek colouring.
Dr. Knowles could see them going to the house beyond, talking
earnestly. He sat down in the darkening twilight on the stile,
and waited half an hour. He did not care to hear the story of
Margret's first day at the mill, knowing how her father and
mother would writhe under it, soften it as she would. It was
nothing to her, he knew. So he waited. After a while he heard
the old man's laugh, like that of a pleased child, and then went
in and took her place beside him. She went out, but came back
presently, every grain of dust gone, in her clear dress of pearl
gray. The neutral tint suited her well. As she stood by the
window, listening gravely to them, the homely face and waiting
figure came into full relief. Nature had made the woman in a
freak of rare sincerity. There were no reflected lights about
her; no gloss on her skin, no glitter in her eyes, no varnish on
her soul. Simple and dark and pure, there she was, for God and
her master to conquer and understand. Her flesh was cold and
colourless,--there were no surface tints on it,--it warmed
sometimes slowly from far within; her voice, quiet,--out of her