'On the Road'

Bates depicts two travellers who come across each other in the woods: a handsome and muscular man with 'a glimpse of a tattoo mark of a purple and crimson flower on his naked chest' and a pregnant woman with 'tawny eyes sleepy and rich with changing lights, the lips ripe and heavy, the large, strong face superb with its passionate languor.'

A manuscript, dated January 1931, is held in the collection of the Lilly Library, Indiana University, USA. (https://archives.iu.edu/catalog/InU-Li-VAD6063)

In the New Statesman (February 28, 1931), Now and Then (Winter 1931), The Black Boxer Tales (1932), Thirty Tales (1934). Reprinted in Best British Short Stories, 1931 (1931), The Best Short Stories of 1931 (London: Cape, 1932), Turnstile One: A Literary Miscellany from The New Statesman and Nation (London: Turnstile, 1948), and Argosy (November 1950).