TWO:His mind painted him a picture it had never dared paint beforethe comfortable red house basking in sunshine, with a garden full of flowers, a cow or two at pasture in the meadow, the little hop-field his only tilthhis dear frail wife sitting in the porch, his children playing at her feet or reading at her kneeperhaps they were hers too, perhaps they were not. He saw himself contented, growing stout, wanting nothing he hadn't got, so having nothing he didn't want ... he was leaning over her chair, and gazing away into the southern distance where Boarzell lay against the sky, all patched with heather and thorns, all golden with gorse, unirrigated, uncultivated, without furrow or fence....He wanted to smash Tilly even more than he wanted to smash Realf. He had seen her twice since her marriagemeeting her once in Rye, and once on Boarzelland each sight had worked him into a greater rage. Her little figure had strengthened and filled out, her demure self-confidence had increased, her prettiness was even more adorable now that the rose had deepened on her cheeks and her gowns strained over her breast; she was enough to fill any man with wrath at the joke of[Pg 237] things. Tilly ought to be receiving the wages of her treachery in weariness and anxiety, fading colour and withering fleshand here she was all fat and rosy and happy, well-fed and well-beloved. He hated her and called her a harlotbecause she had betrayed Odiam for hire and trafficked in its shame.
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