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The woman was baffled.

‘So you may say,’ she replied, staccato. ‘So you may say. That’s easy enough. My name’s known, and respected, by most people for ten miles round. But I don’t know you.’

Her voice ran to sarcasm. ‘I can’t say I know you. You’re a perfect stranger to me, and I don’t believe I’ve ever set eyes on you before tonight.’

Her voice was very flexible and sarcastic.

‘Yes, you have,’ replied the man, in his reasonable way.’ Yes, you have. Your name’s my name, and that girl Maryann is my girl; she’s my daughter. You’re my Missis right enough. As sure as I’m Willie Nankervis.’

He spoke as if it were an accepted fact. His face was handsome, with a strange, watchful alertness and a fundamental fixity of intention that maddened her.

‘You villain!’ she cried. ‘You villain, to come to this house and dare to speak to me. You villain, you down-right rascal!’

He looked at her.

‘Ay,’ he said, unmoved. ‘All that.’ He was uneasy before her. Only he was not afraid of her. There was something impenetrable about him, like his eyes, which were as bright as agate.

She towered, and drew near to him menacingly.

‘You’re going out of this house, aren’t you?’–She stamped her foot in sudden madness. ‘This minute!‘

He watched her. He knew she wanted to strike him.

‘No,’ he said, with suppressed emphasis. ‘I’ve told you, I’m stopping here.’

He was afraid of her personality, but it did not alter him. She wavered. Her small, tawny-brown eyes concentrated in a point of vivid, sightless fury, like a tiger’s. The man was wincing, but he stood his ground. Then she bethought herself. She would gather her forces.

‘We’ll see whether you’re stopping here,’ she said. And she turned, with a curious, frightening lifting of her eyes, and surged out of the room. The man, listening, heard her go upstairs, heard her tapping at a bedroom door, heard her saying: ‘Do you mind coming down a minute, boys? I want you. I’m in trouble.’

The man in the bar took off his cap and his black overcoat, and threw them on the seat behind him. His black hair was short and touched with grey at the temples. He wore a well-cut, well-fitting suit of dark grey, American in style, and a turn-down collar. He looked well-to-do, a fine, solid figure of a man. The rather rigid look of the shoulders came from his having had his collar-bone twice broken in the mines.

The little terrier of a sergeant, in dirty khaki, looked at him furtively.

‘She’s your Missis?’ he asked, jerking his head in the direction of the departed woman.

‘Yes, she is,’ barked the man. ‘She’s that, sure enough.’

‘Not seen her for a long time, haven’t ye?’

‘Sixteen years come March month.’

‘Hm!’

And the sergeant laconically resumed his smoking.

The landlady was coming back, followed by the three young soldiers, who entered rather sheepishly, in trousers and shirt and stocking-feet. The woman stood histrionically at the end of the bar, and exclaimed:

‘That man refuses to leave the house, claims he’s stopping the night here. You know very well I have no bed, don’t you? And this house doesn’t accommodate travellers. Yet he’s going to stop in spite of all! But not while I’ve a drop of blood in my body, that I declare with my dying breath. And not if you men are worth the name of men, and will help a woman as has no one to help her.’

Her eyes sparkled, her face was flushed pink. She was drawn up like an Amazon.

The young soldiers did not quite know what to do. They looked at the man, they looked at the sergeant, one of them looked down and fastened his braces on the second button.

‘What say, sergeant?’ asked one whose face twinkled for a little devilment.

‘Man says he’s husband to Mrs. Nankervis,’ said the sergeant.

‘He’s no husband of mine. I declare I never set eyes on him before this night. It’s a dirty trick, nothing else, it’s a dirty trick.’