After five years of marriage, Nathan was scarcely more than a superior hired man on the farm. Dorinda still smiled at his jokes; she still considered his appetite; she still spoke of him respectfully to the children as "your father"; but he had no part, he had never had any part, in her life. It was his misfortune, perhaps, that by demanding nothing, he existed as an individual through generosity alone. Yet humble as he was in the house, his repressions fell away from him as soon as he was out on the farm. The mechanical gesture of sowing or reaping released his spiritual stature from the restraints that crippled it in the flesh. Contact with the soil dissolved his humility, as alcohol dissolved the inhibitions which had made Rufus when he was sober colourless and ineffectual in comparison with Rufus when he was drunk. Farming was Nathan's solitary outlet, for he did not drink and he had observed scrupulously his promise not to encroach on Dorinda's freedom. He left her at liberty, as he often reminded her, to have things her own way, and nothing in his nature, except his habits, was strong enough to resist her. Though she had been able to break him of chewing tobacco in the house, he still drank his coffee from his saucer and sat with his feet on the railing of the porch. Yet he was an easy man, she reflected, to live with, and for a woman who was growing arrogant with prosperity, an easy man was essential. At thirty-eight her philosophy had crystallized into the axiom, "you can't have everything." In the midst of the abandoned acres the broad cultivated fields were rich and smiling. Where the broomsedge had run wild a few years ago, the young corn was waving, or the ragged furrows of the harvest wheat were overflowing with feathery green. In the pasture, if she had looked from the front porch instead of from the back one, she would have seen the velvety flanks of the cattle standing knee deep in grass. At her feet, a flock of white Leghorns, direct descendants of Romeo and Juliet, were scratching busily in the sheepmint.