11By the light of the candle she did not look much more than thirty, in the soft light downfalling upon the softungirdled presence of a woman prepared for sleep. When he saw her by daylight he knew that she was better than thirtyfive. Later she told him that she was forty. ‘Which means either fortyone or fortynine, from the way she said it,’ he thought. But it was not that first night, nor for many succeeding ones, that she told him that much even.
She told him very little, anyway. They talked very little, and that casually, even after he was the lover of her spinster’s bed. Sometimes he could almost believe that they did not talk at all, that he didn’t know her at all. It was as though there were two people: the one whom he saw now and then by day and looked at while they spoke to one an
