It was the girl’s voice he heard. Albert peered through the stalks of grain, he saw without being seen, his blood rushing to his head. He heard a chuckle, the sickle dropped from her hand. She feigned to cry for help but in a voice he could scarcely hear; the other reaper worked steadily on at the other end of the field. The driver and the peasant girl were now hidden in the tall grain . . . The driver soon returned to his horses, grazing by the wayside. He was a stocky man in the early thirties, with a red face and a forehead bloodlessly white from the pressure of his cap. His face was now of a deeper red, his eyes seemed bloodshot, and he was panting. He busied himself with the cart. “Oh, but she is strong,” he said, half to himself. Albert was watching the driver adjust the axle. “Who is she?” asked Albert. “Do I know? From the neighborhood!” He emitted a little laugh and proceeded with his work. Presently he and the driver were in the cart, the wheels creaking, the horses plodding along the road. The peasant girl waved her sickle, the driver waved his whip, the horse started off at a livelier trot in a cloud of dust. Albert leaned back in his seat, lost in thought. He was puzzled. He knew the driver had a wife and five children, yet passing a girl he had never seen before and desiring her he made her his without courting, without brooding, without dreaming and musing, without being troubled about the scheme of things. They loved, they hated, they killed (if their king told them to) and begot others like themselves. He looked at the driver as if he had beheld him for the first time. The peasant’s face was now calm, its natural red, his bluish eyes had cleared; they were no longer bloodshot; he was looking blankly in front of him, with whip in hand, was looking over the horse’s head. He had evidently forgotten about the reaper. She was no more to him than the field of rye in which she worked, no more than the bread he had eaten that morning, the glass of beer he had drunk the day before.