IX

If she could have forgotten the man and so finished with him, if he

were dead and she had seen him buried in the earth and still and gone

forever, if she could have been a widow and known her life with the man

ended, it would have been easier for her. If the hamlet had known her

widowed and if she could have kept before her pure and strong that true

widowhood, and if she could have heard people say, when she passed or

where she knew it said, “A very good true widow is that wife of Li, now

dead. There he lies dead and buried and she goes steadfast and true to

him, such a one as in the old days would have had a marble arch put up

or at least an arch of stone for her honor.” If she could have heard

talk like this it would have been a strength to her and a thing to stay

herself by, and to this shape that people made of her she might have

set her heart and so lived better than she was because men thought her

so.

But widow she was not, and often must she answer those who called to

ask her how her man did and ever must she lie and cheerfully and keep

him in constant mind through her very lies. They would call, “There

you are, goodwife, and have you had a letter of late or message by

some mouth to say how your man is?”

And she, passing by with a load for market across her shoulder or

coming slowly home with empty baskets must answer often out of deathly

weariness, “Yes, by word of mouth I hear he does right well, but he

only writes me once a year.”

But when she was come to her own house she was torn in two with all

her lies. Sometimes she was filled with sadness and loneliness and she

cried to her own heart, “How sorrowful and lone a woman am I whose only

man is one I must make for myself out of words and lies!”

At such times she would sit and stare down the road and she would think

heavily, “That blue robe of his would show a long way off, if he had a

mind to turn to home again, so clear and fine a blue it was!”

And indeed if ever she saw a bit of blue anywhere in the distance her

heart would leap, and if a man passed in the distance wearing a blue

robe she could not but stop what she did and hold her breath to see how

he came, shading her eyes against the sun if she were in the field, her

hoe dropped from her hand, while she watched if he came this way or

that or if he passed or if he went a long way off. And always it was

not he who passed, for blue is a very common color and any man might

wear a blue robe, if he be a poor and common man.

But there were times when her lies made her angry at him and she told

herself the man was not worth it and if he had come home at one such

time as this she would have burst her anger full upon him and cursed

him soundly while she loved him because he made her suffer so. Times

there were when this deep anger lasted over days, so that she was

sullen and short with the children and with the grandmother and pushed

the dog away roughly with her hoe, although she grieved her own heart

the more when she was so.

At one such time as this it came about that it was time for the rice

to be measured after harvest. Once more she had struggled through the

harvest and alone except for such help as the lad could give, and a day

or two from the good cousin, and the day came for the division of the

threshed grain. It seemed to the woman that day as though her longing

and her anger had made her heart like raw flesh, so that everything she

saw fell on it sorely as a blow, and things she did not see of common

times she saw and felt this day.

And while she longed, there upon her threshing-floor beside the heaped

grain the agent stood, the landlord’s agent, and he was a tall man

dressed in a silk robe of gray, and his face square and large and

handsome in its bold way. He had his old manner she remembered, a

manner of seeming courtesy, but his eyes were full and the lids heavy

and half closed over them, and the woman knew from the way he stared at

her from under those heavy drooping lids that he had heard her tale

and how her husband was gone out to other parts and never had come

back. Yes, there was something today in her full heart that caught this

knowledge in him, and the truth was he was such a man as could not look

at any woman left alone and not wonder secretly what she was and how

her heart was made and how her body was shaped. There was a dog’s heart

in him, for all his big, good frame and his square full face and his

voice he made so hearty and frank. But in spite of his forced courtesy

and his free words the tenants hated him, and they feared him because

he had a high hard temper and this big body and two large, swift fists

that he clenched and held hard against his thighs if any argued against

what he said. Yes, and then he lifted the lids he drooped over his

eyes, and his eyes were terrible, shining and black and cruel. Yet

often they laughed at him, too, for if they gave him his fee without

quarrel, he made a joke or two to salve the taking, and they could not

but laugh at what he said, although with rue, for he had a way about

him somehow.

So did he make a little merry on this day when he came to the mother’s

house where she lived alone without her man and he knew she did, and he

called out heartily to the lad, “I see your mother does not need your

father with such a man as you to tend the fields!”

Then the boy swaggered his little lean body and boasted, shy and bold

at once, he was so pleased, “Oh, aye, I do my share,” and he spat as

he had seen men do, and set his arms upon his little bony thighs and

felt himself grown and fully man.

Then the agent laughed and looked at the mother as though to laugh

kindly with her over this lad of hers, and the woman could not but

smile, and she handed him a bowl of tea she had poured out in common

courtesy as to any passing guest. And being so near his laughing eyes

she could not but look into them, and there was that great, greedy,

starving heart of hers showing in her own eyes without her knowledge

that it did. The man stared at her and scented her heat and he turned

hot and grave and when he took the bowl he touched his hand to hers as

though not knowing her hand was there. But the woman felt the touch and

caught its meaning in her blood like flame.

Then she turned herself away shamed and would not hear what her own

heart said. No, she busied herself with the grain and while she did it

she grew suddenly afraid of her own self and she said to the lad in a

low voice, “Run to our cousin and ask him to come hither and help me,”

and to her heart she said, to still its wildness, “If he is here--if

our good cousin is here--”

But the lad was proud and wilful and he argued, “I am here, mother, and

I will help you. What other do you need? See, I am here!”

Then the agent laughed loudly and slapped his thick thigh and he took

secret advantage of the innocent lad and he cried, “So you are, my

lad, and true enough your mother needs no other man!”

Then the lad grew the more bold being so encouraged and when his mother

said again, half faintly, “It would be better if our cousin were here,”

the boy caught the faintness and he cried, “No, I will not call him,

mother! I am man enough!” and he took up the scales and strutted to

fill the measure with the grain and the woman laughed uneasily and let

him be, and the truth was there was something in her, too, that pulled

at her to let him be.

When the grain was measured out and she had made a measure full again

to give the agent for himself, that agent put it from him in a lordly

way and he smoothed his long straight upper lip and looking ardently

into the woman’s face--for who was there save these children and that

old woman nodding in her sleep under the eaves by the door?--he said,

“No, I will not have it! You are a lone woman now and your man gone

from home and all this is your own labor. I will take no more of it

than my landlord must have, or blame me if he does not. I will take no

fee from you, goodwife.”

Then was the woman suddenly afraid in the midst of the sweet sick heat

that was upon her and she grew confused and pressed the fee upon him.

But he would not have it. He pushed the measure away, his hand on hers

while he did, and at last when he took the measure from her he poured

the grain back into the basket where she kept it stored, and he would

not have it.

Nor had she strength to beg him any more. Under this man’s smooth

face and smiling ways, under that gray costly robe of his, there was

some strange and secret force that poured out of him into the shining

autumn sun and clung to her and licked about her like a tongue of

fire. She fell silent then and hung her head like any maid and when he

poured the grain back and bowed and went his way, laughing and bowing

and smoothing his long lip where there was no hair, she could not say

a word. She stood there in silence, her bare brown feet thrust into

broken shoes, one hand twisting the corner of her patched cotton coat.

When he was gone she lifted her head and looked after him and at that

same instant he turned and caught her look and bowed and laughed again.

Yet, in such a way he went, and afterwards she wished a thousand times

she had not looked after him like that and yet she could not help it

when she did it. Then the boy cried out gladly, “A good man, mother,

not to take his fee! I never heard of such a good agent not to take his

fee!” And when she went into the kitchen silently, half in a dream with

what had passed, he following crying at her, “Is he not a good man,

mother, who wanted nothing for himself?” And when still she answered

nothing he cried peevishly, “Mother--mother!”

Then the mother started suddenly and she answered in strange haste,

“Oh--aye, son--” and the lad prattled on, “So good a man, mother--you

see, he would take nothing from you at all, knowing how you are poor

now that my father is gone.”

But the mother stood still of a sudden, the lid of the cauldron lifted

and still in her hand. She stared at the boy fixedly and her heart

echoed strangely, shamed and yet filled with that sick sweet fever,

“Did he want nothing of me?” Though to the lad she answered nothing.

* * * * *

Nor could the man forget the woman’s heat. For this excuse and that he

came back to the hamlet and now it was to make sure of some account

which he thought he had written wrong, and now it was to complain that

such a one had given a measure short and the landlord was angry with

him. Most often of all he went to the cousin’s house, which stood near

the woman’s, and he went to see of this and that, and now he brought

some new seed of a kind of cotton that was held very fine in other

parts or he brought a man with him carrying a load of lime or some such

thing to make the fields more fertile, and the cousin was dazed with

so much coming. At first he was afraid the agent had some evil purpose

toward him and then he grew anxious when nothing came out for him to

see, and he said to his wife, “It must be he has some very deep and

evil purpose if it is so long leaking out of him,” and he watched the

man anxiously and sat and stared at him, yet impatient, too, to be at

his work again that waited for him, and yet afraid to be lacking in

courtesy to one who could do him evil if he would.

But neither cousin nor cousin’s wife saw how the secret eyes of the

agent went sliding under his lids toward the woman across the way,

and how if she were not there upon her threshold, he stayed but a

little while, and how if she were there he sat on and on, facing her,

and often he cried in loud and false good nature, “No, good fellow, I

have no errand other than this. I am but a common man, too, and I like

nothing better than to sit in an honest man’s dooryard and feel the

autumn sun upon me.” But all the while he stared across the way where

the woman sat spinning or sewing.

Now this was the season when the land was sinking into quiescence for

the winter. The wheat was planted in the dry earth and waiting for a

rain to sprout it, and the mother took a little leisure and sat in her

doorway and mended the winter garments and made new shoes, for the

girl’s sight was not enough for this, and never would be. She sat there

in the full sun for warmth, half listening to the old woman’s talk and

what her children had to say to her, and half dreaming, and her lips

were tranquil and her skin warm and golden brown with the sun and her

hair shiny black with health and newly combed now she had the time

to do it every day, and these days she looked younger than she was,

although she was yet not thirty and five years old.

Well she knew that man sat there across the few feet of roadway but she

would not look up and sometimes when she felt his look press her too

hard she rose and went into the house and stayed there until she had

seen him go. But she knew why he came and she knew he looked at her for

a cause, and she could not forget him.

All through that winter she could not forget him somehow. At last it

grew too cold for him to come even for his purpose. When the snow fell

and when the winds came down bitter and dry out of the northwest, she

might have forgotten him. But she did not.

Once more the new year came and she went into the town as she did every

year and sold some grain and changed her silver into paper and she went

and sought a different letter writer, and once more she had the letter

written as though the man sent it, and once more the hamlet heard the

news and knew she had the money from her man.

But this time their fresh envy and all their talk and praise put

nothing in the woman’s empty heart. Not even pride could comfort her

this time. She listened to the letter read, her face quiet and cold,

and she took it home and that night she put it in the oven with the

burning grass. Then she went to the table in the room where there was a

small drawer and after a while she opened it and brought out the three

letters there, for so long had the man been gone now, and she took them

also to the fire and laid them on the flames. The lad saw it, and he

cried out astounded,

“Do you burn my father’s letters then?”

“Aye,” the mother answered, cold as death, her eyes on the quick flames.

“But how will we know where he is, then?” the lad wailed.

“I know as well as ever. Do you think I can forget?” the woman said.

So she emptied her heart clean.

* * * * *

But how can any heart live empty? On a day soon after this she went

into the city to change again her bit of paper, for these days she did

not trouble her cousin often, having learned to be alone, and when she

had the ten pieces in her hand she turned to go and there a man stood

by the door upon the street, and he stood smiling and smoothing his

upper lip, and it was the landlord’s agent.

Not since the late autumn had he seen her close as this, and there was

none near who knew them and so he stared at her boldly and smiling and

he said, “What do you here, goodwife?”

“I did but change a bit of money--” she broke off here, for she had

been about to say on, “that my man sent me,” but the words stuck in her

throat somehow and she did not utter them.

“And what then?” he asked her, his lids lifted and his eyes pressing

her.

She drooped her head and strove to speak as commonly she did, and she

said, “I thought to go and buy a silver pin, or one washed with silver,

to hold my hair. The one I had grew thin from long use and broke

yesterday.”

It was true her pin to hold her hair had so broken, and she said the

truth before she knew it, and turned to go away, ashamed even before

people who did not know her to be seen speaking to a man upon a town

street, and he was a man somewhat notable in his looks, and being

taller than most men and his face very square and pale, so that people

were already looking at them curiously as they passed.

But the man followed behind her. She knew he followed behind her as she

went soberly and modestly down the way and she was afraid not to do

what she had said she would, and so she went to a small silver shop she

knew and stood at the silversmith’s counter and asked to see his pins

of brass, washed with silver. And while she waited she toyed a moment

with some silver earrings that were there and suddenly the agent came

up while she toyed and he pretended he did not know her and he said to

the silversmith, “How much are these earrings?”

Then the silversmith said, “I will weigh them to see how much silver

is there, and then will I sell them to you honestly and fairly by what

they weigh.”

And the silversmith let the pin wait a while, seeing this man was clad

in silk and a better purchaser, doubtless, than this countrywoman in

her blue cotton coat. So the woman could only stand and turn her head

away from those bold secret eyes and the man stood indolently waiting

as the silversmith put the rings upon the little scales.

“Two ounces and a half,” the silversmith said in a loud voice. Then

lowering his voice he added coaxingly, “But if you buy the earrings for

your good lady, then why not add a pair of rings? Here are two to match

the earrings, and it will all be a fine gift, suited to any woman’s

heart.”

The man smiled at this and he said carelessly, “Add them, then.” And

then he said laughing, “But they are not for a wife--the wife I had

died a six-month ago.”

The silversmith made haste to add the rings, pleased at so fine a sale,

and he said, “Then let them be for the new wife.” But the man said no

more but stood and stared and smoothed his lip. Not once did this man

show he knew the countrywoman was there. He took the rings when they

were wrapped and went away. But when he had turned his back the mother

sighed and watched him half jealous for the one he had bought the

trinkets for, such things as she would have loved and in her girlhood

had often longed to have. And indeed they were the very things she had

said her husband bade her buy with the silver she spent, and the gossip

often asked these days, “Where are those rings you said you have? Let

me see what their pattern is.” And the mother was often hard put to it

and she said, “The silversmith is making them,” or “I have put them in

a certain place and I have forgot where they are for the moment,” and

many such excuses had she made until this last year when the gossip had

said with how great malice, “And do you never wear those rings yet?”

and then the mother answered, “I have not the heart and I will put them

on the first day he comes home.”

So when she had bought the pin and slipped it through her coil of hair,

she turned home again thinking of the dainty silver things and she

sighed and thought she had not heart to take her hard-earned silver

and buy herself a toy, after all, seeing that doubtless it mattered to

no one how she looked now, and she would let be as she was. Thinking

thus and somewhat drearily, she wound her way out of the city gate and

upon the narrow country road that branched off to the hamlet from the

highway, and she thought of home and of the comfort of her food when

she was there, the only comfort now her body had.

Suddenly out of the twilight of the short winter’s evening there stood

the man. Out of the twilight he stood, sudden and black, and he seized

her wrist in his large soft hand and there was no other soul near by.

No, it was the hour when countrymen are in their houses and it was

cold and the air full of the night’s frost and such a time as no one

lingers out unless he must. Yet here was he, and he had her wrist and

held it and she felt his hand on her and she stood still, smitten into

stillness.

Then the man took the small parcel of silver he had and with his other

hand he forced it into her hand that he held, and he closed her fingers

over it and he said, “I bought these for none other than for you. For

you alone I bought them. They are yours.”

And he was gone into the gathering shade under the city wall, and there

was she left alone, the silver trinkets in her hand.

Then she came to herself and she ran after him crying, “I cannot--but I

cannot--.”

But he was gone. Although she ran into the gate and peered through the

flickering lights that fell from open shops, she could not see him. She

was ashamed to run further into the town and look at this man’s face

and that in the dim light, and so she stood, uncertain and ashamed,

until the soldiers who guarded the city gate called out in impatience,

“Goodwife, if you are going out this gate tonight go you must because

the hour is come when we must close it fast against the communists,

those new robbers we have these days.”

She went her way then once more and crossed the little hill and down

into the valley, and after a while she thrust the trinkets in her

bosom. The moon rose huge and cold and glittering as soon as the sun

was set, and when she came home the children were in their bed, and

the old grandmother asleep. Only the lad lay still awake and he cried

when his mother came, “I was afraid for you, my mother, and I would

have come to find you, only I was afraid to leave the children and my

grandmother.”

But she could not even smile at his so calling the other two children

as though he were a man beside them. She answered, “Aye, here I be, at

last, and very weary somehow,” and she went and fetched a little food

and ate it cold, and all the time the trinkets lay in her bosom.

When she had eaten she glanced toward the bed and by the candlelight

she saw the lad slept too, and so she fastened the curtains and then

she sat down beside the table and took the little packet from her

breast and opened the soft paper which enwrapped it. There the rings

lay, glittering and white, and the earrings were beautiful. Upon each

were fastened three small fine chains, and at the end of each chain

hung a little toy. She took them in her hard fingers and looked closely

and upon one chain hung a tiny fish and upon the second a little bell

and upon the third a little pointed star, all daintily and cleverly

made and pleasing to any woman. She had never held such pretty things

before in her hard brown palm. She sat and looked at them a while and

sighed and wrapped them up again, not knowing what to do with them, or

how to give them back to that man.

But when she had crept under the quilt with the children she could not

sleep. Although her body was cold with the damp chill of the night her

cheeks were burning hot and she could not sleep for a long time and

then at last but lightly. And partly she dreamed of some strange thing

shining, and partly she dreamed of a man’s hot hand upon her.

X

She did not see the man again through the whole spring, although she

remembered him. She did not see him until a day in the early summer,

when the wheat was turning faintly gold, and she had sown her rice in

beds for seedlings, and it was sprouted new and green and set in small

blocks of jade near the house where it could be well watched by the old

grandmother against the greedy birds that loved its tenderness. And all

this time her heart lay in her hot and fallow.

But there came a day in that early summer, a day windless and full of

soft new heat. The cicadas called their sharp loves and when they had

called past the crisis their voices trailed slow and languorous into

silence again. Into the valley the sun poured down its heat like clear

warm wine and the smooth warm stones of the solitary street of the

little hamlet threw back the heat again so that the air shimmered and

danced above them, and through those waves the little naked children

ran and played, their smooth bodies shining with their sweat.

There was no little passing wind of any sort at all. Standing upon her

threshold the mother thought she had never felt such close and sudden

heat as this so soon in summer. The younger boy ran to the edge of the

pool and sat in the water there, laughing and shouting to his playmates

to come and join him, and the elder lad took off his coat and rolled

his trousers high and put on his head a wide old bamboo hat that had

been his father’s once and went out to the field of newly sprouted

corn. The girl sat in the house for darkness and her mother heard her

sighing there. Only the old woman loved this heat and she sat in the

sun and slipped the coat from her old withered frame and let the sun

soak down into her old bones and on her breasts that hung like bits

of dried skin on her bosom, and she piped when she saw her son’s wife

there, “I never fear to die in summer, daughter! The sun is good as new

blood and bones to an old dried thing like me!”

But the mother could not bear the outer heat. Heat there was enough

inside her and her blood seemed this day to thunder through her veins

with too much heat. She left the house then saying, “I must go and

water the rice a while. A very drying sun today, old mother,” and she

took her hoe and on her shoulder slung her empty water buckets and so

walked down the narrow path to where a further pond lay somewhat higher

than the seed beds of the rice, and she walked gratefully, because

the air though hot was not so shut and lifeless as it had been on the

street.

She walked on and met no one at all, because it was the hour after

noon when men take their rest. Here and there if a man had gone early

to his field he sought the shade, for, after all, the heat was too

great for labor, and he lay sleeping under some tree, his hat covering

his face against the flies, and beside him stood his beast, its head

drooping and all its body slack with heat and drowsiness. But the

mother could bear the heat because it came down out of the sky and was

not shut between walls or all in her own veins.

She worked on a while then in her seed beds and with her hoe she cut a

little gate in the higher edge of the bed and she dug a small water way

to the pond, and then she went to the pond’s edge and with her buckets

slung upon the pole she dipped first one and then the other into the

water and then emptied them into the ditch she had dug. Over and over

she dipped the water and watched the earth grow dark and moist and it

seemed to her she fed some thirsting living thing and gave it life.

Now while she was at this task she straightened her back once and set

her buckets down and went and sat upon the green edge of the pond to

rest, and as she sat she looked to the north where the hamlet was and

there she saw a man stop and ask the old woman something and then he

turned and came toward her where she sat by this pond. She looked as he

came and knew him. It was the landlord’s agent, and while he came she

remembered she had his trinkets still and she hung her head not knowing

how to speak of them without giving them back again, and not daring

now to go and find them and give them back to him in this full light of

day when any passing soul might see her do it and the old woman wide

awake, too, in the sun, and she was quick to see a thing she ought not.

So the man came on, and when he was come the mother rose slowly, being

lesser in place than he and woman, too, before a man. But he called

out freely and he said, “Goodwife, I came but to look and see what the

wheat is this year and guess the harvest from the fields!”

But while he spoke his eyes ran up and down her body, clad for the heat

in but a single coat and trousers of patched blue stuff worn thin and

close to her shape and his eyes fixed themselves upon her bare brown

feet and in fear of her own heart she muttered rudely, “The fields lie

yonder--look then, and see!”

So he glanced over them from where he stood and he said in his

pleasant, townsman’s way, “Very fair fields, goodwife, and there have

been worse harvests than there will be this year.” And he took out

a little folded book and wrote something down on it with a sort of

stick she had never seen before, seeing he needed not to dip it in ink

at all, as the letter writer did, for it came out black itself. She

watched him write and half it made her curious and half it touched her

and made her proud to think so learned and goodly a man had looked at

one like her, even when he should not, and she thought she would not

speak of the trinkets this one time.

When he had finished his writing he said to her smiling and smoothing

his lip, “If you have time, show me that other field of yours that

stands in barley, for I ever do forget which is yours and which your

cousin’s.”

“Mine is there around the hill,” she said half unwillingly, and now her

eyes were dropped and she made as if to take the hoe again.

“Around the hill?” the man said and then his voice grew soft and he

smoothed that lip of his with his big soft hand and smiled and said,

“But show me, goodwife!”

He fixed his eyes on her steadily now and openly and his gaze had

power to move her somehow and she put down her hoe and went with him,

following after him as women do when they walk with men.

The sun beat down on them as they went and the earth was warm beneath

their feet and green and soft with grass. Suddenly as she walked the

woman felt her blood grow all sweet and languorous in her with the hot

sun. And without knowing why, it gave her some deep pleasure to look

at the man who walked ahead of her, at his strong pale neck, shining

with sweat, at his body moving in the long smooth robe of summer stuff,

at his feet in white clean hose and black shoes of cloth. And she went

silently on her bare feet and she came near to him and caught some

fragrance from him, too strong for perfume, some compound of man’s

blood and flesh and sweat. When she caught it in her nostrils she was

stirred with longing and it was such a longing she grew frightened of

herself and of what she might do, and she cried out faltering, and

standing still upon the grassy path, “I have forgot something for my

old mother!” and when he turned and looked at her, she faltered out

again thickly, her whole body suddenly hot and weak, “I have forgot a

thing I had to do--” and she turned from him and walked as quickly as

she could and left him there staring after her.

Straight she went to her house and she crept across the threshold and

none noticed her, for everyone lay sleeping. The heat of the day had

grown heavier as the afternoon wore on. Across the way the cousin’s

wife sat sleeping, her mouth ajar, and the last babe sleeping at her

breast. Here the old grandmother slept too, her head drooped and her

nose upon her chin, and her clothes slipped to her waist still as she

had sat in the sun. The girl had come out of the close room and lay

curled against a cool stone for a pillow and she slept, and the younger

lad lay naked and stretched to his full length beneath the willow tree,

asleep.

The very day had changed. It was grown darker and more still and full

of deeper and more burning heat. Great clouds loomed swollen, black and

monstrous, up from the hills. But they shone silver-edged, luminous

from some strange inner light. Even the sound of any insect, the call

of any bird, was stilled in the vast hot silence of that day.

But the mother was far from sleep. She went softly into the darkened,

silent room, and she sat herself upon the bed and the blood thundered

in her ears, the blood of her strong hungry body. Now she knew what was

amiss with her. She pretended nothing to herself now, as a townswoman

might pretend, that there was some illness she had. No, she was too

simple to pretend when well she knew how it was with her, and she was

more frightened than she had ever been in her whole life, for she knew

that such hunger as was in her now grew raving if it were not fed....

She did not even dream she could repulse him, now she knew her own

hunger was the same as his, and she groaned aloud and cried to her

heart, “It would be better if he would not have me--Oh, I wish he would

not have me, and that I might be saved!”

But even while she groaned she rose driven from off that bed and went

from the sleeping hamlet and to the fields along the way that she had

come. She walked along under the great, black, bright-edged clouds and

about her were the hills, livid green and clean against the blackness.

She went under such a sky, along the little winding turn the path took

where it turned past a small and ruined shrine, and there in the door

of the shrine the man stood, waiting.

And she could not pass him. No, when he went inside and waited she

followed to the door and looked and there he stood inside the twilight

of the windowless shrine, waiting, and his eyes gleamed out of that

twilight, shining as a beast’s eyes, waiting, and she went in.

They looked at each other in the dim light, two people in a dream,

desperate, beyond any power now to stay, and they made ready for what

they must do.

Yet did the woman stop once, too. She looked up from her dream and she

saw the three gods in the shrine, the chief a staid old man staring

straight ahead of him, and by his side two small attendants, little,

decent gods of the wayside for those who paused in their journey for

worship or for shelter. She took the garment she had laid aside and

went and threw it on their heads and covered up their staring eyes.