<He watched the [illegible] go through the> Two days before the wedding he said to her: "Is there any <particular> reason why
you are marrying that particular blackguard?" She was reading in bed then; he had fetched her in a letter which
he had forgotten at noon. She lowered the book and looked at him, her brow beneath her loose hair apparently
broader than ever, with a serene <dullness> placidity like that of a <st> heroic statue. Suddenly he began to speak
at her with a thin fury, watching the sense of his words flow through her eyes a sentence or so behind, as always,
without seeming to go any deeper. "What are you, anyway? What sort of life have you led for 26 years that
you can lie there with the supreme and placid stupidity of a cow being milked, when two nights from now — "
he ceased; she watched him while the last sentence completed itself just behind her eyes, faded. "Narcy," he said,
"dont do it, Narcy. We both wont. I'll – listen: we both wont. You haven't gone so far that you cant, and
when I think what we . . . . . . . . With this house, and all it — Dont you see we cant? It's not anything to give up:
you dont know, but I do. Good God, when I — "

She watched him while that sentence completed itself. Then she said: "You've got the smell of her all over you. Cant you
tell it?"

<But that was 10 years ago, and he had got accustomed to it. That was the tragedy: not that things lasted [illegible] nothing
did last. That night they were talking. He was lying in a sawdust pile at a sawmill then, 24 miles away, <<[illegible]>> with
a dogeared book in one pocket and the photograph, minus the frame, in another, thinking again how a man must
even at 43> After her marriage she moved out into the country, where her husband lived. Horace <would not
go out; not once after her marriage did he see them together. <<When she came>> He lived in> did not attend the
wedding; he never saw her walk out of the house in a <dress in which he> costume he had never seen before and
would never see again; he never saw the two of them together again. <Once a month <<week>> she came in. He would find her
alone in the house and each time he would say with a mixture of hope and rage: "Narcy, has that surly
blackguard — ?"> He saw her only once before her husband died. He returned home at noon and opened the
door and they were looking at one another.

"Narcy," he said, "has that surly blackguard — ?"

"You fool! You haven't even <a rain> an umbrella!"

In the window the curtains blew faintly upon the smoldering breath of locust. The house was new, of stucco. They had
lived in it 7 of their 10 years of the 19 years she had been Harry Mitchell's wife. She had been married to Harry
9 years and <he> Horace thought how it had required Harry's wife's promiscuousness to render to him the affirmation of her chastity.

He walked out of the mirror and crossed the hall quietly and looked into Belle's room. It was pink, the
bed piled high with pink pillows frosted with lace. On the night-table beneath a pink-shaded lamp lay
a box of chocolates and a stack of gaudy magazines. The closed door was ajar, the symmetry of the dressing-
table broken where she had paused again to don her hat. <Well, you got what you thought you wanted, he told
himself. What of that? he replied, Everyone is entitled to what he thinks he wants.> He went to the table and
looked; in a moment he found what he sought: a soiled handkerchief with which she had removed the surplus
rouge from her mouth, and stuffed between the mirror and the wall. He carried it to the closet and put it
in a bag for soiled linen and left the room.

Still moving quietly he went on toward the back, passing the door beyond which Little Belle's heels had
ceased. It was closed, quiet. He went on and entered his study and stood beside the flat desk beside
the window. Through it he could see the grape arbor, the green-snared symbol of the ancient ferment; the
fresh promise of the old resurgence. <What blossom the grape has in April and in May, that is: that tor-
tured, waxlike bleeding less of bloom than leaf,> with the sun of May stippling the small murmur of young leaves
upon the floor, and the light winds talking into the window of dogwood out of the south and west.