The love
of such a widow, he found, is as the surrender of a maid, with wisdom
added.
The skewers finished, he walked out through the house with her and
down the garden-path, carrying the basket as far as the gate. The
scent of pine-shavings came with him. Half-way down the path Naomi
turned aside and picking a sprig of Boy's Love, held it up for him
to smell. The action was trivial, but as he took the sprig they both
laughed, looking in each other's eyes. Then they kissed; and the staid
woman went her way down the road, while the staid man loitered for a
moment by the gate and watched her as she went.
Now as he took his eyes away and glanced for an instant in the other
direction, he was aware of a man who had just come round the angle of
the garden hedge and, standing in the middle of the road, not a dozen
yards off, was also staring after his wife.
This stranger was a broad-shouldered fellow in a suit of blue seaman's
cloth, the trousers of which were tucked inside a pair of Wellington
boots. His complexion was brown as a nut, and he wore rings in his
ears: but the features were British enough.
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