Clara grew tired of thinking, and listened to the talk. The name of Hugh McVey played through the persistent conversation like a refrain. It became fixed in her mind. The inventor was not married. By the social system under which she lived that and that only made him a possibility for her purposes. She began to think of the inventor, and her mind, weary of playing about her own figure, played about the figure of the tall, serious-looking man she had seen on Main Street. When Alfred Buckley had driven away to town for the night, she went upstairs to her own room but did not get into bed. Instead, she put out her light and sat by an open window that looked out upon the orchard and from which she could see a little stretch of the road that ran past the farm house toward town. Every evening before Alfred Buckley went away, there was a little scene on the front porch. When the visitor got up to go, her father made some excuse for going indoors or around the corner of the house into the barnyard. “I will have Jim Priest hitch up your horse,” he said and hurried away. Clara was left in the company of the man who had pretended he wanted to marry her, and who, she was convinced, wanted nothing of the kind. She was not embarrassed, but could feel his embarrassment and enjoyed it. He made formal speeches. “Well, the night is fine,” he said. Clara hugged the thought that he was uncomfortable. “He has taken me for a green country girl, impressed with him because he is from the city and dressed in fine clothes,” she thought. Sometimes her father stayed away five or ten minutes and she did not say a word. When her father returned Alfred Buckley shook hands with him and then turned to Clara, apparently now quite at his ease. “We have bored you, I'm afraid,” he said. He took her hand and leaning over, kissed the back of it ceremoniously. Her father looked away. Clara went upstairs and sat by the window. She could hear the two men continuing their talk in the road before the house. After a time the front door banged, her father came into the house and the visitor drove away. Everything became quiet and for a long time she could hear the hoofs of Alfred Buckley's horse beating a rapid tattoo on the road that led down into town.