For a time the tall dark girl thought she would marry the jeweler’s son. For hours she sat in silence listening as he talked, and then she began to be afraid of something. Beneath his talk of virginity she began to think there was a lust greater than in all of the others. At times it seemed to her that as he talked he was holding her body in his hands. She imagined him turning it slowly about in the white hands and staring at it. At night she dreamed that he had bitten into her body and that his jaws were dripping. She had the dream three times, then she became pregnant by the one who said nothing at all, but who in the moment of his passion actually did bite her shoulder so that for days the marks of his teeth showed. After the tall dark girl came to know Doctor Reefy it seemed to her that she never wanted to leave him again. She went into his office in the morning and without her saying anything he seemed to know what had happened to her. In the office of the doctor there was a woman, the wife of the man who kept the bookstore in Winesburg. Like all old-fashioned country practitioners Doctor Reefy pulled teeth, and the woman who waited held a handkerchief to her teeth and groaned. Her husband was with her and when the tooth was taken out they both screamed and blood ran down on the woman’s white dress. The tall dark girl did not pay any attention. When the woman and the man had gone the doctor smiled. “I will take you driving into the country with me,” he said. For several weeks the tall dark girl and the doctor were together almost every day. The condition that had brought her to him passed in an illness, but she was like one who has discovered the sweetness of the twisted apples and could not again get her mind fixed again upon the round perfect fruit that is eaten in the apartments. In the fall after the beginning of her acquaintanceship with him she married Doctor Reefy and in the following spring she died. During the winter he read to her all the odds and ends of thoughts he had scribbled on the bits of paper. After he had read them he laughed and stuffed them away in his pockets to become round hard balls. Song of the Killing of Liars RICHARD HUNT My hands have grown strong Wanting to clutch throats. I have looked about me, Love, And you are the only one I do not want to kill. They tried to kill me When I was young and helpless: They almost did for me, And I cannot forgive them. Whom shall I choke first?— The minister who told me a piece of bread Was Christ’s body to be chewed weepingly? Or my father who nearly frightened me to death Because I dreamed about a girl? Then there is my old teacher Who made me write five hundred times, “A man’s first duty is to his flag.” Liars! First I will insult them And strip them naked of their lies: Then I will choke them dead, And burn their institutions.