Second paragraph of third chapter:

Well, one sounded the bell that hung on a post, and presently Margaret in a white dress would come out of the porch and would walk to the stone steps down to the river. Invariably, as she passed the walnut-tree that overhung the path, she would pick a leaf, crush it, and sniff the sweet scent; and as she came near the steps she would shade her eyes and peer across the water. “She is a little near-sighted; you can’t imagine how sweet it makes her look,” Chris explained. (I did not say that I had seen her, for, indeed, this Margaret I had never seen.) A sudden serene gravity would show that she had seen one, and she would get into the four-foot punt that was used as a ferry and bring it over very slowly, with rather stiff movements of her long arms, to exactly the right place. When she had got the punt up on the gravel her serious brow would relax, and she would smile at one and shake hands and say something friendly, like, “Father thought you’d be over this afternoon, it being so fine; so he’s saved some duck’s eggs for tea.”

I am familiar with Rebecca West’s non-fiction, but this is the first of her novels that I have read, and it was also the first book she had published, in 1918. Shell-shocked Chris returns from the war in 1916, with amnesia wiping out the last fifteen years of his life; he is obsessed with the (now married) working class girl he had a fling with in 1901, and has totally forgotten his own wife and their recently dead young son. The story is narrated by Chris’ cousin who clearly has feelings for him herself. It’s a tightly written, intense story of mental illness and trauma, with a lot more going on under the surface, and I got a lot out of it. You can get it here.