of the broadest worldly experiences and wit. He was younger than
Calvin, but older than Wilmer Deakon, and a little fat. He had a small
mustache cut above his lip, and closely shaved ruddy cheeks with a
tinge of purple about his ears. Drawing out his monologue
entertainingly he gazed repeatedly at Lucy. Calvin lost the sense of
most that the other said; he was immersed in the past that had been
made the present and then denied to him--it was all before him in the
presence of Lucy, of Hannah come back with the unforgetable and magic
danger of her appeal.

IX

In the extension of his commercial activity Martin Eckles kept his room
at the Greenstream hotel and employed a horse and buggy for his
excursions throughout the county. It had become his habit to sit
through the evenings with the Stammarks where his flood of conversation
never lessened. Lucy scarcely added a phrase to the sum of talk. She
rocked in her chair with a slight endless motion, her dreaming gaze
fixed on the dim valley.

Wilmer Deakon, on the occasion of his first encounter with Eckles at
the Stammarks', acknowledged the other's phrase and stood waiting for
Lucy to proceed with him to the parlor. But Lucy was apparently unaware
of this; she sat calm and remote in her crisp white skirts, while
Wilmer fidgeted at the door.

Soon, however, she said: "For goodness' sake, Wilmer, whatever's the
matter with you? Can't you find a chair that suits you? You make a
person nervous."