“Are there any things he specially likes?” she asked Paul.

“He likes to eat, of course, being a pig,” said Paul, “and he loves you to scratch his back with a stick.”

“Oh, then it’s easy.  Come outside the pen.  Now listen.  You go back to the barn and get whatever it is you feed him.  Then you put that in the trough, and let him begin to eat, quietly.  Then take your oil and your brush, and moving very slowly so that you don’t startle him, lean over the fence and begin to brush it on his back where he likes to be rubbed.  If he likes the feel of it, he’ll probably stand still.  I’ll wait here, till you see how it comes out.”

She moved away a few paces, and sank down on the grass under the tree, as though the heat had flung her there.  The grass crisped drily under her, as though it too were parched.

She closed her eyes and felt the sun beating palpably on the lids . . . or was it that hot inward pulse still throbbing . . . ?  Why wouldn’t Neale do it for her?  Why wouldn’t he put out that strength of his and crush out this strange agitation of hers, forbid it to her?  Then there was nothing in her but intense discomfort, as though that were a universe of its own.  A low, distant growl of thunder shook the air with a muffled, muted roar.

After a time, a little voice back of her announced in a low, cautious tone, “Mother, it works! Henry loves it!”

She turned her head and saw the little boy vigorously rubbing the ears and flanks of the pig, which stood perfectly still, its eyes half shut, rapt in a beatitude of satisfaction.

Marise turned her head away and slid down lower on the grass, so that she lay with her face on her arm.  She was shaking from head to foot as though with sobs.  But she was not crying.  She was laughing hysterically.  “Even for the pig!” she was saying to herself.  “A symbol of my life!”

She lay there a long time after this nervous fit of laughter had stopped, till she heard Paul saying, “There, I’ve put it on every inch of him.”  He added with a special intonation, “And now I guess maybe I’d better go in swimming.”

At this Marise sat up quickly, with an instant experienced divination of what she would see.

In answer to her appalled look on him, he murmured apologetically, “I didn’t know I was getting so much on me.  It sort of spattered.”

* * * * *

It was, of course, as she led the deplorable object towards the house that they encountered Eugenia under a green-lined white parasol, on the way back from the garden, carrying an armful of sweet-peas.

“I thought I’d fill the vases with fresh flowers before the rain came,” she murmured, visibly sheering off from Paul.

“Eugenia ought not to carry sweet-peas,” thought Marise.  “It ought always to be orchids.”

In the bath-room as she and Paul took off his oil-soaked clothes, Mark’s little voice called to her, “Mother!  Mo-o-other!”