Directly he had said the words, he looked over at Rose to see how she would receive them. Her eyelashes lay black and curly against her cheek, then they lifted slowly, and her eyes looked out from under the half-raised lids with a kind of demure roguishness. At the same time her lower lip seemed to quiver and plump out, while the corners of her mouth rose and curled. He suddenly felt a desire to plant a kiss fairly on that wet red mouth, which from away across the room seemed to pout towards him. § 2. Supper was a quiet meal. Old Jury and his invalid wife sat at each end of the table, while Alice did most of the helping and waiting. They seemed a sorry three to Reuben, pale, washed out, and weakly, their eyes bright as birds' with the factitious light of their enthusiasms for things that did not matter. They ate without much appetite, picking daintily at their food, their knives never in their mouths. Reuben found himself despising them as he despised the Bardons. Rose did not talk much, but she ate heartily--she must be as healthy as she looked. Once or twice during the meal Reuben caught himself staring at her lips--they were extraordinarily red, and at the end of the meal the juice of her pudding had stained them purple. She said that she must leave directly after supper. Alice fetched her hat, which was not the kind that Reuben had ever seen on country girls, being of the fashionable pork-pie shape. All her clothes were obviously town-made; she wore a blue stuff dress, tight-fitting round her bust and shoulders, full and flounced in the skirt--afterwards he heard that Rose had spent some years with relations in London before coming to live at Starvecrow. He gave her his arm, said good-bye to Alice in the doorway, and went through the little garden where flowers crowded out vegetables in a very unbusiness-like way, into the lane which wound past Cheat Land and round the hanger of Boarzell, to the farms of the Brede Valley. Rose, a little to his surprise, began to chatter volubly. She talked very much like a child, with naïve comments, about simple things. She asked trivial questions, and screamed with delight when some dusk-blinded bird flew against her breast and dashed down heavily into the ruts. She exclaimed at the crimson moon which rose behind the hedge like a hot penny--she laughed at the slightest provocation; and yet all the while he was conscious of an underlayer of shrewdness, he had an extraordinary conviction of experience. Besides, while she laughed and babbled like a child, her eyes continually rose towards his with a woman's calculated boldness. They spoke something quite different from her lips--the combination was maddening; and those lips, too, in their rare silences, were so unlike the words they uttered that he scarcely knew whether he wanted most to silence them completely or never let them be silent.