"Don't _talk_ about it."

"Your death then."

"Oh, mine--"

"Our death, Jeanne."

He turned to her in the path. His mouth was hard now, but his eyes shone
at her, smiling, suddenly warm, suddenly tender.

She knew herself then; she knew there was one cruelty, one brutality
beyond bearing, John's death.




IV


John had gone away for a week.

If she could tire herself out, and not dream. In the slack days between
hay-time and harvest she was never tired enough. She lay awake, teased by
the rucking of the coarse hot sheet under her back, and the sweat that
kept on sliding between her skin and her night gown. And she dreamed.

She was waiting in the beech ring on the top of the field. Inside the
belt of the tree trunks a belt of stones grew up, like the wall of the
garden. It went higher and higher and a hole opened in it, a long slit.