She had reached for the fiddle and was touching the strings without a sound. He said that he was tired as a dog and that he would go home and go to bed. He looked at her covertly, oppressed with weariness or some other burden. “I ought to ’a’ gone straight home, but I just thought I’d drop by.” His old smile, touched with some bitterness or sadness, went over his face for a moment and he took his hat from the table. “So long,” he said. “I’m off.” * * * * * Albert and Florence were coming in at the doorway. It was the day after his return. He was richly alive, his life leaping within him, and Florence’s deep low voice was cutting to the end of the parlor, to the end of the hallway, as Theodosia came down the staircase to meet them. They were sitting on the black haircloth divan toward the piano, and Theodosia sat on the blue chair opposite, giving them her searching interest, questioning, lending her low laugh to their hearty laughter. Florence Agnew’s lips had the ripples of water. “The flesh beside her mouth is a pearl with life in it,” Theodosia was thinking, and the event was gathering swiftly. Florence rested continually upon her beauty, luxuriating upon it, and her quick eyes went frequently to Albert’s eyes where they continued some former contact and some growing knowledge. They were telling of the day before, of the afternoon spent among the growers, and they had many incidents to recall, droll sayings, laughter, droll prejudices, caricatures of close-handed men. When their eyes met, Theodosia knew that she was forgotten. Once she arose quickly, murmuring some apology, and left the room. She walked the length of the cabinets of the Indian flints and looked through the glass, seeing nothing beyond. She stared at a stone hatchet, seeing no meaning beyond the outline. When she went back to the parlor they were sitting apart, Albert on the chair by the window, and she knew from some look of ease that enveloped them that they had had their caress. After that the talk lay quietly among the matters of the town, gossip of this one or that, but it flowed back to the farmers again and settled among the percentages and statistics. “Is the pool assured?” Theodosia asked, and Albert seemed lost for the moment in some remote shock, seemed dazed as she came back thus into her former relation to the pool, to her interest in it. Her final report of it came through Florence Agnew. “Oh, yes, it is,” Florence said. “Isn’t it, Albert?” “Oh, yes, a sure thing now. All set.”