accounts of arson and adultery and homicide, in her grave, contralto voice. Miss Jenny listened, her head lean-
ing back against the rest and her eyes closed, her thin profile rosy and serene in the firelight. Her husband
had been killed in 1862, on the <third> second anniversary of her wedding day. She had not spoken his name
in 67 years.

Narcissa read on:
[margin: to Horace, listening, it seemed that she had never been so far away, so com-
pletely functioning in another world, not even last night when she and Belle seemed for the time one and interchangeable.
He watched her quietly, wondering what he had expected of her. He could seem to recapture none of it, not even the
closeness, the [illegible], let alone the glib words]
Saddie moved quietly about, preparing the high walnut bed. Beside it was a small iron
cot, where she slept. The boy leaned against the mantel, gazing moodily into the fire, kicking his <[illegible] > heel
slowly with the other toe.

"Uncle Johnny was an aviator, too," he said. "They were goddam good ones."

<"B> Narcissa raised her head, her voice stopping in mid-sentence, and looked at him across the open page
<"B> with [tranquil?] consternation. "Benbow! Who told you that?"

"Aunt Jenny did," the boy said. "He said he'd take me, but you wouldn't let me go. "He brooded." Taking an old girl to a
dance."

<When he was in bed, Narcissa returned.> At 8 Narcissa took him off to bed. Miss Jenny stirred, looked at
him. "Go <on back, Horace> back home, Horace."

"Not home," he said. He said, "It wasn't her I ran to. I haven't gone to the trouble of quitting one woman just
to run to the skirts of another."

"If you keep on telling yourself that, you'll be believing it," Miss Jenny said. "Then what'll you do?"

"That'll be time to go home," Horace said. He said, <"She's changed.">

When Narcissa returned she said: "What're you going to do, Horace?"

"I dont know. Stay here a while, I think. <I shant trouble you, though. I'll open the house.">

"What I want to know is, why he left," Miss Jenny said. "I cant get him to tell me. Did you find a man under
the bed at last, Horace?"

"No such luck," Horace said. "It was Friday, and <I w> all of a sudden I thought how I'd have to — "

"But you have been doing that for 10 years," Narcissa said.

"I know. But, like I told her, I still do not like to smell shrimp.

"Was that why you left her, Horace?" Miss Jenny said. "Because you had to <walk> go to the statiion once a week
and walk home with a box of shrimp? I always wondered why Belle never sent you back to Harry Mitchell
for an automobile too, like she did for that child when she had agreed to give it up. Then you wouldn't
have to walk every time you quit her. . . . . . . . . It look you a long time to learn that, if a woman dont
make a good wife for one man, she aint very likely to for another, didn't it?"

"But to <walk> just <like> walk out like a nigger," Narcissa said. "And then to mix yourself up with moon-
shiners and street-walkers. Why must you do such things, Horace?"

"Well, he's gone and left that one, too," Miss Jenny said. "Unless you're going to walk the streets with an orange
stick in your pocket until she comes to town. Are you?"

"Yes," Horace said, "out there with that gorilla in his tight suit and his straw hat, smoking his cigarettes
in that ruined hall, and that filthy old man sitting on whatever chair they have put him in, waiting for
them to do whatever they are going to do with him, with that immobility of the blind, like it was the
back of their eyeballs you looked at while they <listened to music you couldn't hear."> were listening to
music you couldn't hear."