“Let’s sit here a little while, under this pine tree. On the grass.” “I went to the creek to fish one summer with a party, Conway in the lot. I remember how we laughed and talked all the best part of a night once, a big log fire, and how Conway looked, by the fire, in the light of the blaze. Laughed till he shook all over when Albert told the one about the deacon up at Elijah Church. Did you ever hear Albert tell about Deacon Pope’s prayer?” “No. Or maybe I have. I don’t know.” She sat under the pine tree, inattentive to Frank’s story, lost in a haze of grief which was no less ever-present because she did not know exactly where it centered. She knew that if Frank had not been present she should actually have wept, but that he held the flow of her grief intact with some hushing power, that his presence called for definite tears, exactly wept, committed to a future which she had now obliterated. Alone in her room when the walk was over, she remembered the beauty of the hilltop and the sublimated air of the bird’s song, and the grass that swung backward in the late afternoon sunlight. As her memory grew more intense, dwelt upon, the intensity of her grief multiplied, gathered now into a passion for Conway, whom she was free to mourn and long for. She remembered every gesture and posture of his body, conned each one to bring it back to being, and focused about his jealousy, which had become precious now, and about his bitter, hurt replies, that fell the more poignantly in that they were surrounded by his lightness and carelessness. She was free to love him and to want him. Her hate of Albert inverted itself and became an intense passion for Conway. She searched for a small picture of him, turning out boxes and drawers in a state of violent grief which centered half the night about the finding of this small physical token. When she had found it she set it upon her mantel in the place of honor from which she had withdrawn pictures of Albert, of Ruth, and of Jane. Preoccupied with her grief she took less account of the town. Jane came no more to sit on her piano bench and twitter at the notes of the music, or if she came to the portico for a brief call she seemed business-like, abstracted, mirthless. Ruth had found diversions in another street. She saw them clearly now. They had liked her sincerely, in their ways, but they had liked her as a means of access to Conway and Albert. They had poured their friendship over her for this. * * * * *