Now from her youth up this woman had been ever a creature of deep still heats. She was not as some women are, quick to look at this young man and that and appraising any man who passed. No, she was a woman of a very deep heart, shy to the depths of it, and until she was properly wed even when she was alone her thoughts had not turned to men for their own sake, and if strange longings rose from within her deeply she never looked at them to see what they were or why they came, but she went on steadfastly to some task she had to do, and bore her longing patiently and in a waiting silence. Only when she was wed and had known a man for all he was did some clearness come to her, some distillation of that deep dumb longing, so that even while she scolded her man sometimes and was angry with him, she knew she could not live without him. That thick, impatient longing in her could even heap itself like thunderous clouds into a causeless anger against the man she loved until it resolved itself and they clung each to each, and she was satisfied in the old and simple way and so was made tranquil again. Yet the man was never enough. In himself he was never enough. She must conceive by him and feel a child take life and shape within her. Then was the act complete and while the child moved and grew she went in a daze of happiness, being fulfilled. Yes, even when she bawled her little angers at her children when they were under her feet and when they cried and whimpered for this and that and were wilful as children must be, yet she never saw the signs of new birth upon herself without a sweet content of body, as though she were fed and rested and had slept so that her body wanted nothing more. So had she ever loved a babe. Even so it had been in the old days when she was a girl in her father’s house and in a village but a little larger than this hamlet set in hills. Her father’s house was full of little children and she was the eldest and like a mother to them; yet even when she was weary with the day’s toil and the children running under her feet were a trial to her so that she shouted at them to be out of her way, yet never even when she shouted was she really out of love with them. There was always something in their smallness that weakened her heart, and many a time she would pick up a little child, whether of their own house or of some neighbor’s, and hold him against her and smell of him hard and fondle him as long as he would bear it, because it was some passionate pleasure to her to feel a little child, although she did not know why.