“Why are you like this?” she cried, beating her pallid hands together, “I have known you for so long.”
“Ah, we have known each other for so long, but as for really knowing you--no! I’m not a tame rabbit to be fondled any more.”
She stared for a moment, as if in recollection; then burst into ironical laughter. He caught her roughly in his arms but she beat him away.
“Yes,” she burst out tempestuously, “and stop there.”
He was stunned by her unexpected violence. She was coarse like Ianthe after all. But he said steadily:
“I’m willing to go there if you will only keep out of my way when I arrive.”
Then he left her standing in a lane, he hurried and ran, clambering over stiles and brushing through hedges, anything to get away from the detestable creature. She did not follow him and they were soon out of sight of each other. Anger and commination swarmed to his lips, he branded her with frenzied opprobrium and all the beastliness that was in him. Nothing under heaven should ever persuade him to approach the filthy beast again, the damned intolerable pimp, never, never again, never.
But he came to a bridge. On it he rested. And in that bright air, that sylvan peace, his rancour fell away from him, like sand from a glass, leaving him dumb and blank at the meanness of his deed. He went back to the lane as fast as he could go. She was not there. Kate, Kate, my dove! But he could not find her.
He was lost in the fields until he came at last upon a road and a lonely tavern thereby. It had a painted sign; a very smudgy fox, in an inexplicable attitude, destroying a fowl that looked like a plum-pudding but was intended to depict a snipe. At the stable door the tiniest black kitten in the world was shaping with timid belligerency at a young and fluffy goose who, ignoring it, went on sipping ecstatically from a pan of water. On the door were nailed, in two semicircles of decoration, sixteen fox pads in various stages of decay, an entire spiral shaving from the hoof of a horse, and some chalk jottings:
2 pads 3 cruppers 1 Bellyband 2 Set britchin
The tavern was long and low and clean, its garden was bare but trim. There was comfort, he rested, had tea, and then in the bar his painful musings were broken by a ragged unfortunate old pedlar from Huddersfield.