"The Enchantress."
A story of a woman who from an early age enchants and captures one man after another by becoming the perfect complement to his needs. The narrator, while not named Richardson,resembles that Bates-like narrator of Love for Lydia in being an aspiring writer, a lover of flowers, and, later in the tale, a Royal Air Force officer writing pieces very like Bates's Flying Officer X stories; the setting, like other works Bates placed in fictional Evensford, is based on Bates's Rushden in the Nene valley, and features youthful courting and dances described in a manner very similar to events in Love for Lydia. Published with the title "Summer Enchantress" in Argosy (April 1958), then as "The Enchantress" in Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal and Other Stories/The Enchantress and Other Stories (1961), Seven by Five/The Best of H.E. Bates (1963).