From the mechanical monster terrifying the cantering colt at the beginning, (a brilliant bit of Lawrence this - demonstrating the way that the iron horse may be able to carry more than the animal but that it can't beat it's pace) to the un-weeping widow at the end, we may think that this is just a 'tale'. But hours after the story is finished, the images are still with the reader.

It is autumn, Lawrence's least-liked season, and the afternoon light is "stagnant".

The kitchen takes on a life of it's own, thanks to the fire. At first, "all the life of the room" seems in the hearth. But, as the master does not return the fire kitchen becomes menacing, "the room [was] dark red." Annie, with her child's innocence, finds excitement in the glowing coals - disillusioned Lizzie can only see that it will need making up with coal, another cause for complaint from her awaited husband. Again, we see Annie's nature and love of beauty through her delight at the flowers in her mother's apron and we are led to conclude that Lizzie was once as receptive to beauty as this little girl. Even the scent of the chrysanthemums is hateful to the woman because of the connotations of misery it brings - her marriage and the drunkeness of her husband.

In the menace of the room as they wait - the children playing but ever on the alert, the mother determinedly sewing, even the flannel makes a "wounded sound".

It is not until the last sentence before Part II that we realise that there is more than anger in her mind. She is afraid.

Lawrence portrays the weariness that worrying brings so well. The way the mind jumps from one thing to another - how will she manage on the pension if he is dead? - will they get on better if only wounded and kept away from the drink?

When Lizzie eventually goes to look for her man, we see her reticence, which will not allow her to actually go into the public house to look for him. She goes to see his "butty".

Lawrence portrays the social factors he knew so well. The butty's wife rushing to gossip with her neighbour, the man's deference to the other man's wife.

The miner's mother arrives, increasing the sense of doom. Waiting, the wife's thoughts are for her family, the mother's for the lad her son had been. Wondering why he should have turned out to be the "trouble" he has - she seems to be shifting some of the blame onto the wife with the words, "You've had a sight of trouble with him Elizabeth, you have indeed. But he was a jolly enough lad wi' me, he was, I can assure you."

The man has been smothered by a fall of coal. As his wife has been smothered by him and the odour of chrysanthemums.

The mother can do little but weep. It is the wife who makes all the arrangements and sees to the practical work (even to finding something to save the carpet from the dirt of her dead husband).

When the women have stripped the man and washed him they each see something very different in his nakedness. To the mother he is the still "clear and clean and white, beautiful as ever a child was made." But the wife sees that she has never really known this man. She tries to reach him, but he is impregnable. She who has been impregnated by this "stranger" feels that the child in her womb is turned to ice. She realises that whilst she has been fearing, living and sleeping with this man, she has not been actually realising *this* man. And the thought creeps into her mind - was she to blame too?

The story ends, with Lizzie's realisation that she is, in fact, powerless to control her life. "Life is her immediate master." And the future? She winces "from death, her ultimate master."