with a quick movement of his hand through the water, which, disturbed, caught the light and played black and gold, like something alive, over his chest.  In his own mother the imprisoned spirit was almost more present to people than her corporeal self.  He had so often felt it when he sat with her on summer nights like this.  Mahailey, too, had one, though the walls of her prison were so thick—­and Gladys Farmer.  Oh, yes, how much Gladys must have to tell this perfect confidant!  The people whose hearts were set high needed such intercourse—­whose wish was so beautiful that there were no experiences in this world to satisfy it.  And these children of the moon, with their unappeased longings and futile dreams, were a finer race than the children of the sun.  This conception flooded the boy’s heart like a second moonrise, flowed through him indefinite and strong, while he lay deathly still for fear of losing it.

At last the black cubical object which had caught Leonard Dawson’s wrathful eye, came rolling along the highroad.  Claude snatched up his clothes and towels, and without waiting to make use of either, he ran, a white man across a bare white yard.  Gaining the shelter of the house, he found his bathrobe, and fled to the upper porch, where he lay down in the hammock.  Presently he heard his name called, pronounced as if it were spelled “Clod.”  His wife came up the stairs and looked out at him.  He lay motionless, with his eyes closed.  She went away.  When all was quiet again he looked off at the still country, and the moon in the dark indigo sky.  His revelation still possessed him, making his whole body sensitive, like a tightly strung bow.  In the morning he had forgotten, or was ashamed of what had seemed so true and so entirely his own the night before.  He agreed, for the most part, that it was better not to think about such things, and when he could he avoided thinking.

III

After the heavy work of harvest was over, Mrs. Wheeler often persuaded her husband, when he was starting off in his buckboard, to take her as far as Claude’s new house.  She was glad Enid didn’t keep her parlour dark, as Mrs. Royce kept hers.  The doors and windows were always open, the vines and the long petunias in the window-boxes waved in the breeze, and the rooms were full of sunlight and in perfect order.  Enid wore white dresses about her work, and white shoes and stockings.  She managed a house easily and systematically.  On Monday morning Claude turned the washing machine before he went to work, and by nine o’clock the clothes were on the line.  Enid liked to iron, and Claude had never before in his life worn so many clean shirts, or worn them with such satisfaction.  She told him he need not economize in working shirts; it was as easy to iron six as three.