Jason drew a deep breath and stood up and tested his strength. So far as Junior was concerned, he would undertake to handle him in the future, not from ambush, not with the help of a piece of brick. He would engage, by the strength of his arms and the tumult in his heart, to meet Junior as man met man upon any occasion. Then he advanced a degree further in his progression, only to face the power of the banker. How was it that a beautiful woman in fine clothing appeared in his humble home; that she called the banker “Martin”; that she dared lay her hands upon him; that she tried to stop him from coming up the stairs mouthing his threats to kill; that she endured the blow from his blood-dripping hand? Who could the woman of foaming laces and arresting beauty have been save Marcia Peters? In his heart Jason always had called the woman with whom he lived “Marcia Peters.” She never had taught him to call her “mother.” He never had attempted the familiarity even when a small child. She had said to him: “Marcia will give you a glass of milk.” He had said to her: “Marcia, please give me a piece of bread.” How was it that in his life with her she was plain and homely, bending over a washtub, quietly mending laces and embroideries, while behind a locked door there was a room full of light, of delicate colour, of fashionable clothing, a room from which emanated flower perfumes and the tang of wine, a room with which the banker must have been familiar since he stepped from it laying down the law of outrage? Jason’s shoulders were square and his face was toward home now. But some way, as he took the first step in that direction, in his heart he felt that he was slightly taller, stronger, different from the boy he had been the night before. He might get no satisfactory answer, but there were questions he intended to ask. He had no idea what he would find at the other side of the meadow. Would Martin Moreland be lying dead at the foot of the stairs? Would Marcia have dragged him into the locked room? Would she tell him to go and dig a deep place in the forest? Would they carry Martin Moreland out the coming night and lay him in it, and must they walk the remainder of their lives with a horrible secret stiffening their mouths and taunting their brains?