'You're like a hound-dog when you laugh like to that,' she said, 'and I
dunna like the hound-dogs.'

He stopped laughing.

Abel's harp beat upon them, and the soft thudding of feet on the turf,
like sheep stamping, had grown in volume as the shyest were gradually
drawn into the revelry.

A rainstorm, shaped like a pillar, walked slowly along the valley,
skirting the base of the hills. It was like a grey god with folded arms
and head aloof in the sky. As it drew slowly nearer to the two who
stood there like lovers and were not lovers, and as it lashed them
across the eyes, it might have been fate.

'Hazel, can't you see I'm in love with you?'

'What for are you?' There was a wailing note in Hazel's voice, and the
rain ran down her face like tears. 'There's you and there's Ed'ard Oh,
what for are you?'

Reddin looked at her in astonishment. A woman not to like a man to be
in love with her. It was uncanny. He stood square-set against the
darkening sky, his fine massive head slightly bent, looking down at
her.

'I never thought,' he said helplessly--'I never thought, when I had
come to forty years without the need of women' ('of love,' he corrected
himself), 'that I should be like this.'