He looked at her curiously. She was not beautiful, her nose was too
large, her chin was too small, her neck was too thin. But her skin was
clear and fine, she had a high-bred sensitiveness. This queer, brave,
high-bred quality she shared with her father. The charity boy could see
it in her tapering fingers, which were white and ringed. The same glamour
that he knew in the elderly man he now saw in the woman. And he wanted to
possess himself of it, he wanted to make himself master of it. As he went
about through the old pottery-yard, his secretive mind schemed and
worked. To be master of that strange soft delicacy such as he had felt in
her hand upon his face,--this was what he set himself towards. He was
secretly plotting.
He watched Matilda as she went about, and she became aware of his
attention, as of some shadow following her. But her pride made her ignore
it. When he sauntered near her, his hands in his pockets, she received
him with that same commonplace kindliness which mastered him more than
any contempt. Her superior breeding seemed to control him. She made
herself feel towards him exactly as she had always felt: he was a young
boy who lived in the house with them, but was a stranger. Only, she dared
not remember his face under her hand. When she remembered that, she was
bewildered. Her hand had offended her, she wanted to cut it off. And she
wanted, fiercely, to cut off the memory in him.
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