In the summer after the school year, Sam had written, once; Edith had answered, twice. End of affair. Yielding to a long assault of cancer, Edith's mother died that summer. An emptiness then, plus discouragement with art school that kept her from going back. Instead she had taken a commercial course in photography, her dazed but practical father approving and footing the bill. The following summer, a purposeful wandering in Amy the Model A (a cantankerously good little heap even now in 1959), remembering more clearly than any other conversation what her father had said before she left: "Look, Skinnay, you marry or work at something you like, or just loaf a while and raise hell, but don't turn into a dutiful daughter taking care of the old man." Shoving aside a heap of paper work brought home--the old man was a C.P.A. and a good one--and turning up to her the bald head, moon face, tenderly sarcastic eyes. "Don't do that, or I will turn you over my knee, and your fanny, dearest, is not fat enough to sustain the impact. The old man takes care of himself." A purposeful wandering, for that summer she had surely been looking for something more than a place that would do for a photographic studio; looking for maturity perhaps. Then Winchester, the investment paying off in adequate survival, plus a bit of freedom. No more letters to Sam: end of affair, diminuendo to an imperfect cadence dissonant with the organ-point, the only resolution silence. _What did we think we were doing? I was fighting to be a person? Or just to make Sam admit I must sometimes be person first, sweetheart second? A lot of the time I was just damn well fighting ..._ Deep inside, very likely, the daughter of earth had been weighing consequences, a simpler Eve murmuring of home, nest, security, advantages of snaring a good man when there was one to be had. _My first, my only, which for a warmblooded redhead is absurd, gentlemen, no argument._ What happens? Why this other drift that for some of us, many of us, extends from months into years of accepting dullness and the erosion of daily demands, waiting for the rainbow blaze that may never appear, the heart knowing all the time that there's only one life and not much time to live it? Edith fidgeted, angry at the introspection itself, at the fatigue or laziness that held her in this armchair when some other part of her honestly wanted to get up and go to work. _O wind-sweet valley of Arcadia--remember me?_ She noticed the chill, and got up then with a flounce of irritation. Caught by Jim's telephone call, she had not yet turned up the heat for the Burrow. Maybe she wouldn't bother. Turn it up in the studio, leave the Burrow cool for bedtime. _Get to work! Or try to._