Katinka, dozing in the afternoon sunshine on a wooden bench outside the sitting-room window, awoke to see a woman coming up the path: an elderly woman, walking painfully with the aid of two rubber-tipped walking sticks, in an elegant town coat and hat that made a black blot against the grey-green of the mountain grass. A woman who had once been beautiful: a Londoner, thought Katinka, or a Parisian or a New Yorker—and dressed still for London or Paris or New York, and not for dragging herself up the rough path of a mountain district in Wales. There was something odd about her, something about the way she held her head, something about the direct way in which she moved, staring straight ahead of her, towards the front door of the house. Katinka leaned forward to get a better view of her, and in doing so knocked her book off the edge of the seat and gave an involuntary exclamation of annoyance. The woman went steadily on, not turning her head; and Katinka thought, that’s it, of course.
