This was in October, and in the blue early dusk people were gossiping at their house-doors, up and down the street. Young Gorwyn felt a spice of adventure in philandering thus openly with the newly-wedded wife of the redoubtable Lovel,--advertising to the whole street his disregard of Lovel. Not that there was any glory in passing the time of day with Daisy; everybody knew that Daisy was cheap and easy, giving impudence for impudence, a joke for a joke. But in making free with Lovel’s property there was glory, in being so near to Lovel’s house; almost inside it, one might say; in dawdling there, treating it as any ordinary house. He thrust his hands into the pockets of his breeches, and lounged, and stared at Daisy. She was a good sort, and he had got off cheap, were his dominant reflections; and was quite sure,--with a grin,--that she read his thoughts and wholly sympathised with them; would not have been shocked, in fact, had he voiced them and held out his hand, thanking her for the escape she had allowed him. He did not credit her perhaps with very much respect for him, but then he had equally little for her. “Let’s see our kid now and then,” he said. “What?” she said sharply. “Let’s see the kid now and then,” he repeated, so that she wondered whether she had heard him right the first time. “Oh,--maybe,” she replied, trying to show herself nonchalant about it as he, being a woman who readily took her cue from men. She remembered the wink in the porch of the church, and that small, all-compromising word, so slily slipped into his phrase, seemed to her a first cousin of the wink; they had the same family air of innuendo, of confederacy. The impertinence! she thought, in her heart of hearts frightened rather than indignant, and she had a good mind to have the question out with him then and there, but, giving him a preliminary look, she decided to hold her tongue; an admission, once made, could not be recalled, whereas silence committed one to nothing. She was far, however, from trusting young Gorwyn now that she came to examine him more closely; he was strong and sleepy and graceful, lounging against the door-post, but there was something of the cat in his face with the broad cheek-bones, and the fair-lashed blue eyes so deep-set that when he smiled they almost disappeared into two little slits, and the way his fair hair grew so thick and low on his forehead; and she knew from experience,--all too well,--how caressing were his hands, caressing and heavy, when he reached them out towards a girl. A return of the passing attraction he had had for her came upon her, and she had a moment of queer disloyalty to Lovel, contrasting his slim darkness with the square Saxon strength of Gorwyn, to whom she was really so suitably mated. Their glances crossed; they understood one another too well, and looked away. “I must be getting on,” said Gorwyn after a pause which lasted a perceptible moment.