She, larger woman, sat deeper in her chair: lost now in a swathing gown of gray that rose like a wave to her white neck. Her shoulders and her chest; bare, were still planturous in their running variance of plane and mood: strong seeking chin, throat swelling as if with graceful words, chest rising downward from the aloof virginity of her neck to the slow fulness of her heavying breasts. Fanny was pregnant. She sat there ... taut limpid body ... in the sun, eyes unwilted, about her child like a sunny song hiding an omen. She sat there gradually giving way ... her taut and limpid sun-shape giving way ... to the dark press of a swollen larva tangled inside her blood, pressing, kicking, sucking weight to rend. Harry Luve was gone three days, without a word ... plenty of signs. She knew. --He has gone. I shall see him again. O yes. Long after I have looked in my child’s eyes. Thank God for that! I shall look long, years perhaps? long and deep in my baby’s eyes in order to understand how I must see him again. His going down was simple like all of Harry Luve ... simple like a very plaintive song. She sat between the high sun and the low wail of her husband: balanced about a child. How sustain the light madnesses of College? except in drink and gambling. How nourish the child in him he was? save with the rolling bloods of liquor, the swift tossings, cradlings, plungings of luck at cards. At the end of deep immersement in a helpless joy forever Birth which was an end: the Birth here at last Disgrace, as the Birth once air. Too much money lost, too much folly of a night in his cups. A woman half dead, half naked, bent across a table, a mirror smashed, ten thousand dollars debt. A birth that! Harry slipped down into it as doubtless he had slipped from his mother’s womb ... whimpering, blinking, inarticulate--nostalgic. He was gone. But his father had Honor to groom. The debt was paid, the woman was salvaged and sent off. No word in the papers. “He will find out he’s safe ... turn up, sobered ... my Dear. Never worry,” his father assured her. “And I ...?” “You are his wife, Frances. You must wait.” She got up. “Will you move my chair, Colonel Luve ... over there?” She walked, clear slender neck and legs with her child so full before her her walk seemed to say: “My child comes first.” Her husband’s parent shook his head. “What can you do, my daughter? You must wait....” She sank in her new-placed chair. “ ...in the sun.” --She is pregnant, Colonel Luve explained away the inconsequent words. Fanny waited. * * * * * “I know your name.... I knew it always ... now you will let me?--_Samson Brenner._” “You say my name as if it meant something.” “Perhaps it does. Perhaps it does. Go on.” “I sometimes wonder why I am studying Law. Writing poems is more fun ... and you know? seems _realler_!” “Yet you distrust writing poems....” “--bad poems.” “Bad because you distrust doing anything for fun?”