So my success had defeated me. She had been seduced by perfection. And I reflected, as I walked home, that even if one ended in a morass, it was something to follow the twinkling of a very little star. I had seen in Coretta the flutter of a potentiality that would one day redeem life from squalor and give the planet an unquenchable glow. The first shock over, I could not stifle the thought that the loss of Sam would be an excellent thing for me. I could replace him with a man whose ideas of farming were not inherited from his great-grandfather: some one who would not make me poorer every year, and keep my wits exercised on the problem of his family’s support. And then, like the breaking of a soft light, the thought stole upon me that I need never again be roused from morning sleep to supply Coretta’s breakfast omissions. Let her go her way. I would not expostulate; I would not persuade; I would not even be sad. My pillow should be mine henceforth. But I took care to avoid the children. This seemed necessary to the anticipated enjoyment of that pillow. I kept away from Coretta’s cabin, and when I saw bobbing curls nearing mine through the bushes, I had sudden errands elsewhere. III I had begun with the beans, fearing an early frost, and remembering the many summer dawns I had preciously invested in keeping the rows clean. They hung in green multiplicity, in spite of the choking weeds that had reared their heads high, unmolested by Coretta’s hoe. In fact, there was a disconcerting abundance all about me. Having set out to be an example of thrift, opportunity hung from every bush. In this hand-to-hand engagement, I lost sight of general aims and purposes. The fourteen points were laid by for later digestion. My New York daily, ordered for filing through a momentous period, served excellently for wrapping winter stores. I did not quite cease to look at the labor horizon for epochal phenomena; but one day, after talking with a farmer on the relative value of two varieties of sweet potatoes, the Texas White and Early Beauty, I found this pencilled among my farm-notes: “The Bisbee deportation is mealy for fall use, but the Soviets are the best winter keepers.” Then I began to have misgivings; but I crushed the seditious rumbling and kept on the path indicated by the Department. Serena returned, but went at once, as I had known she must, to the fodder-pulling, and I had only an occasional friendly hand lent me for help. I had moved my typewriter into the kitchen, thinking that odd moments might go to the making of a masterpiece; but if genius gave a surviving flutter, its tremolo was drowned by the drums and tabors of conservation pomp. To Nature’s tender surprises I became callous; and for her beauty that challenged obviously, I could say with Coretta that I had no heart.