Next morning, in the half light of dawn, which made the cold kitchen look unspeakably sordid, she received Abner. The meeting had none of the warm glamour of their nightly love-making, and her anxiety made him impatient. ‘What the hell do I care for Badger?’ he said. ‘Oh, quiet . . . quiet! Don’t speak so loud!’ she implored him. She submitted to his embraces, but her mind was not with him. ‘I can’t think what’s up with you,’ he said. His unconcern irritated her. ‘Can’t you understand?’ she said. ‘It’s better to do without me for a little than to lose me for good. That’s what would happen if father knew. He’d send me away to Hereford, to grandma’s. That’s what he’d do. Only for a week, Abner. After that, when he’s forgotten about it, things ’ll be better.’ Her distress was so real and she seemed so little to belong to him in her present state that he consented not to see her for a week. ‘Then I shan’t come a’nigh the place,’ he said. ‘I’m not goin’ to sit there looking at you and nothing after.’ ‘Yes . . . that would be best,’ she said gladly. It inflamed him to think that she could take this complete divorce so calmly. ‘Better finish it off,’ he said. Then she clung to him. ‘No, no, Abner. . . . I couldn’t bear that! Only a week, my love, only a week. . .’ He kept to his side of the bargain, and Badger was relieved to see him no more at the Pound House, although the suddenness of Abner’s abstention coloured his suspicions. What with his pheasants and the woman the keeper’s life was becoming too complicated for his intelligence, for Mick profited by Badger’s new devotion to Susie by ravaging his coverts. In this Abner, who had no other way of killing time, joined his friend, and on the last night of the week came a sharp but bloodless encounter in which the keeper was more than ever certain that he had seen Abner’s face. After this it became fixed in Badger’s mind that Abner was his principal enemy, the man who was obstinately working against him wherever he went. Somehow or other, he determined, he must get the better of him. On the night when Abner returned to the Pound House, Badger was already there. Mick, as usual after a successful foray, was spending money freely, and by nine o’clock the room was full of excited men. Abner was ready to drink with the best of them, for his pockets were full of money and he had not been inside a pub for a week. To add to this uproarious assembly in came George Malpas, returning early from his own dark business in Lesswardine. ‘Go easy, boys,’ he said, as he entered, ‘that damned copper’s outside.’