at home in the morning. He grudged giving that
morning to any foreign interest. He wondered what he could do to kill
all that time alone.

The next afternoon he and Leighton drove over to Aunt Jed's in state.
Leighton was still held by his mood--a mood that was not morose so much
as distant. Lewis himself was in no good humor. The morning had palled
on him even more than he had feared. Now he felt himself chilled when he
longed to be warmed. Where his spirit cried out for sunshine, his
father's mood threw only shadow. How tangible and real a thing was that
shadow he never realized until they reached Aunt Jed's and found that it
had got there before them.

Despite mammy's art, the supper was a sad affair. It was not the sadness
of close-knitted hearts about to part that seized upon the company. Love
can thrive on the bitter-sweet of that pain. It was a deeper
sadness--the sadness that in evil hours seizes upon the individual soul
and says: "You stand alone. From this desert place of the mind you can
flee by the road of any trifling distraction, but into it no companion
ever enters. You stand alone." "I myself," cries the soul of man, and
recoils from that brink of infinite distance. Such was the mood that
Leighton had imposed on those he touched that day, for, while he could
take no company into his desert place, by simply going there he could
drive the rest each to his far wilderness.

After supper they sat long in a silence without communion. It became
unbearable. In such an hour bodily nearness becomes a repulsion. Lewis
rebelled. He looked indignantly at Natalie. She too was young. Why did
not her youth revolt? But Natalie wasn't feeling young that night. She
did not answer his look.

"Dad," said Lewis, "I think we'd better go. We have to make an early
start."

"All right," said Leighton, listlessly. "Tell Silas."

Lewis rose and turned to Natalie.

"Aren't you coming?" he asked.

Natalie got up slowly, and drew a filmy white scarf--a cloud, she called
it--about her shoulders. There seemed an alien chill in the air.

As they walked toward the barn, a memory that had been playing
hide-and-seek with Lewis's mind throughout the evening suddenly met him
full in the face of thought. He stopped and stared at Natalie. She was
dressed in red. What was it they had called that birthday dress of long
ago? Accordion silk. The breeze caught Natalie's skirt and played with
it, opening out the soft pleats and closing the