But if I go on--if I'm seen! What a fool I am to go
on!"
And she went on, impelled by, amongst other things, an immense,
naive curiosity, and the vanity which the bare fact of his note
had excited. The Loop railway was being constructed at that
period, and hundreds of navvies were at work on it between Bursley
and Turnhill. When she came to the new bridge over the cutting, he
was there, as he had written that he would be.
They were very nervous, they greeted each other stiffly and as
though they had met then for the first time that day. Nothing was
said about his note, nor about her response to it. Her presence
was treated by both of them as a basic fact of the situation which
it would be well not to disturb by comment. Sophia could not hide
her shame, but her shame only aggravated the stinging charm of her
beauty. She was wearing a hard Amazonian hat, with a lifted veil,
the final word of fashion that spring in the Five Towns; her face,
beaten by the fresh breeze, shone rosily; her eyes glittered under
the dark hat, and the violent colours of her Victorian frock--
green and crimson--could not spoil those cheeks. If she looked
earthwards, frowning, she was the more adorable so.
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