Beyond by John Galsworthy

Still glowing from her morning in the saddle, Gyp started out next day at noon on her visit to the "old scoundrel's" cottage. It was one of those lingering mellow mornings of late September, when the air, just warmed through, lifts off the stubbles, and the hedgerows are not yet dried of dew. The short cut led across two fields, a narrow strip of village common, where linen was drying on gorse bushes coming into bloom, and one field beyond; she met no one. Crossing the road, she passed into the cottage-garden, where sunflowers and Michaelmas daisies in great profusion were tangled along the low red-brick garden-walls, under some poplar trees yellow-flecked already. A single empty chair, with a book turned face downward, stood outside an open window. Smoke wreathing from one chimney was the only sign of life. But, standing undecided before the half-open door, Gyp was conscious, as it were, of too much stillness, of something unnatural about the silence. She was just raising her hand to knock when she heard the sound of smothered sobbing. Peeping through the window, she could just see a woman dressed in green, evidently Mrs. Wagge, seated at a table, crying into her handkerchief. At that very moment, too, a low moaning came from the room above.

Gyp recoiled; then, making up her mind, she went in and knocked at the room where the woman in green was sitting. After fully half a minute, it was opened, and Mrs. Wagge stood there. The nose and eyes and cheeks of that thinnish, acid face were red, and in her green dress, and with her greenish hair (for it was going grey and she put on it a yellow lotion smelling of cantharides), she seemed to Gyp just like one of those green apples that turn reddish so unnaturally in the sun. She had rubbed over her face, which shone in streaks, and her handkerchief was still crumpled in her hand. It was horrible to come, so fresh and glowing, into the presence of this poor woman, evidently in bitter sorrow. And a desperate desire came over Gyp to fly. It seemed dreadful for anyone connected with him who had caused this trouble to be coming here at all. But she said as softly as she could: