‘Oh, I’m tired of you!’ she cried. ‘It’s no use your telling off your lies to me. I’m dead sick of you and your women . . . you and your Susie Hinds and Marion Prossers! Running after loose women with your eyes shut and never a thought for those that keep themselves decent like me. And if there was another caught your eye to-morrow, you’d be up and away after her the same. You’re no better than an animal! Like the rest of men: they’re all the same!’ She stood up to him, trembling with rage. At that moment she was ugly, and rising to the violence of her challenge, he hated her. He lost sight of her weakness. All he saw was her impudent provocation. An answering anger fumed up into his head and carried him away so that he could easily have struck her. He came towards her with his hand lifted. ‘Don’t! Don’t!’ she shrieked in terror. He dropped his hand and walked straight out of the room. Left alone, she was overborne with shame for what she had done, and cried for her lost dignity. Never in her life had she so abased herself. ‘But he lied to me! He lied to me!’ she told herself. ‘If he hadn’t lied to me it wouldn’t have happened!’ Little by little the turmoil of her thoughts abated and she began to remember his goodness, his patience, all that she owed to him. ‘If he had struck me,’ she thought, ‘I should have deserved it.’ She almost wished that his hand had fallen, for nothing less than a blow could have justified her violence and her base ingratitude. The only thing with which she could comfort herself was a firm determination that she would never offend him again. By nothing but the most complete sacrifice of her feelings could she repay him a thousandth part of what she owed him. After that day she never uttered one complaint, though the tale of her sufferings increased beyond the bounds of endurance. To their hardships she turned a front of steel, but to Abner himself she was as tender as she dared to be. The consciousness of this discipline sustained her. She was a new woman, worn and anxious but invincibly cheerful; and Abner himself took heart from her courage. Winter fell upon them. The snow-bound ramparts of the hills came nearer to them, encircling the valley with a clear-cut beauty. The colours of life faded from the land, and every farm was like a fortress of stone, close-barred against the assaults of rain and icy wind. The fields lay cold and dead; the sap sank downward from every frozen branch. There was no colour in all the land but a brilliant mockery of red berries on brier and holly and thorn. ‘There’s a tarrable lot of berry this year,’ said old Drew. ‘I reckon we’m in for a hard winter again.’