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He had a curious quality of an intelligent, almost sophisticated mind, which had repudiated education. On purpose he kept the midland accent in his speech. He understood perfectly what a personification was — and an allegory. But he preferred to be illiterate. Josephine found out what a miner’s checkweighman was. She tried to find out what sort of wife Aaron had — but, except that she was the daughter of a publican and was delicate in health, she could learn nothing. “And do you send her money?” she asked. “Ay,” said Aaron. “The house is mine. And I allow her so much a week out of the money in the bank. My mother left me a bit over a thousand when she died.” “You don’t mind what I say, do you?” said Josephine. “No I don’t mind,” he laughed. He had this pleasant-seeming courteous manner. But he really kept her at a distance. In some things he reminded her of Robert: blond, erect, nicely built, fresh and English-seeming. But there was a curious cold distance to him, which she could not get across. An inward indifference to her — perhaps to everything. Yet his laugh was so handsome. “Will you tell me why you left your wife and children?— Didn’t you love them?” Aaron looked at the odd, round, dark muzzle of the girl. She had had her hair bobbed, and it hung in odd dark folds, very black, over her ears. “Why I left her?” he said. “For no particular reason. They’re all right without me.” Josephine watched his face. She saw a pallor of suffering under its freshness, and a strange tension in his eyes. “But you couldn’t leave your little girls for no reason at all —”