"How do you do, Giles?" said she, under a sudden impulse to be
familiar with him.
He replied with much more reserve. "You are going for a walk,
Mrs. Fitzpiers?" he added. "It is pleasant just now."
"No, I am returning," said she.
The vehicles passed through, the gate slammed, and Winterborne
walked by her side in the rear of the apple-mill.
He looked and smelt like Autumn's very brother, his face being
sunburnt to wheat-color, his eyes blue as corn-flowers, his boots
and leggings dyed with fruit-stains, his hands clammy with the
sweet juice of apples, his hat sprinkled with pips, and everywhere
about him that atmosphere of cider which at its first return each
season has such an indescribable fascination for those who have
been born and bred among the orchards. Her heart rose from its
late sadness like a released spring; her senses revelled in the
sudden lapse back to nature unadorned. The consciousness of
having to be genteel because of her husband's profession, the
veneer of artificiality which she had acquired at the fashionable
schools, were thrown off, and she became the crude, country girl
of her latent, earliest instincts.
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