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130 and valued her affection, she had, after her first surprise, grown very fond of Constance. She never went out in the evening, because of the children, except when Constance invited her. And she sat there, happy to be with Constance, with her gentle smile on her round, fair, motherly little face, pleasant and comfortable with her matronly little figure, now too plump for prettiness.

The men joined them; and, when Constance saw Brauws come in with the others, she thought that he looked strange, pale under the rough bronze of his cheeks. His deep, grey eyes seemed to lose themselves in their own sombre depths; and for the first time she examined his features in detail: they were somewhat irregular in outline, with the short-cropped hair; his nose was large and straight and the heavy eyebrows arched sombrely over the sombre eyes; his temples were broad and level; his cheekbones wide; and all that part of his face was energetic, intelligent, rough and sombre, a little Gothic and barbarian, but yet curiously ascetic, with the asceticism of the thinker. But the mouth might have belonged to quite another face: almost weak, more finely and purely drawn than any of his other features; the lips fresh, without any heavy sensuality; the white teeth seemed to hold a laughing threat as though they would bite: a threat that gave him the look of a beast of prey. And yet that mouth, the moustache and the chin had something more delicate about them,