H.E. Bates Companion

A young draughtsman, "cautious, withdrawn and self-centred," places a newspaper ad for a piece of jewelry he has found, in the process becoming obsessed with romantic fantasies about its owner. The woman who answers has a "plain dull face, its hopeless stare and the straight short hair where no hair-pin could ever possibly have sat." The two catch each other in various lies, but rather than causing them to retreat, this humbles each of them, and the man, making "an abrupt and incredible conquest of shyness," asks to see her again. In Modern Woman (March 1961), The Fabulous Mrs V (1964).