Perhaps I Succeeded In Saving Two Or Three
Threatened Lives In The Lanes And Secret Green Places By The
Stream; Perhaps I Didn't; But In Any Case It Was Some
Satisfaction To Have Made The Attempt.
Now all this made me a somewhat impatient listener to the
village tales - the old unhappy things, for they were mostly
old and always unhappy; yet in the end I had to listen.
It
was her eyes that did it. At times they had an intensity in
their gaze which made them almost uncanny, something like the
luminous eyes of an animal hungrily fixed on its prey. They
held me, though not because they glittered: I could have gone
away if I had thought proper, and remained to listen only
because the meaning of that singular look in her grey-green
eyes, which came into them whenever I grew restive, had dawned
on my careless mind.
She was an old woman with snow-white hair, which contrasted
rather strangely with her hard red colour; but her skin was
smooth, her face well shaped, with fine acquiline features.
No doubt it had been a very handsome face though never
beautiful, I imagine; it was too strong and firm and resolute;
too like the face of some man we see, which, though we have
but a momentary sight of it in a passing crowd, affects us
like a sudden puff of icy-cold air - the revelation of a
singular and powerful personality. Yet she was only a poor
old broken-down woman in a Wiltshire village, held fast in her
chair by a hopeless infirmity.
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