Country’—­and never, of course, do anything original or gay-colored that would help to make that future!  Anyway, you don’t belong here.  Sam Clark and Nat Hicks, that’s what our big newness has produced.  Go!  Before it’s too late, as it has been for—­for some of us.  Young man, go East and grow up with the revolution!  Then perhaps you may come back and tell Sam and Nat and me what to do with the land we’ve been clearing—­if we’ll listen—­if we don’t lynch you first!”

He looked at her reverently.  She could hear him saying,

“I’ve always wanted to know a woman who would talk to me like that.”

Her hearing was faulty.  He was saying nothing of the sort.  He was saying: 

“Why aren’t you happy with your husband?”

“I—­you——­”

“He doesn’t care for the ‘blessed innocent’ part of you, does he!”

“Erik, you mustn’t——­”

“First you tell me to go and be free, and then you say that I ’mustn’t’!”

“I know.  But you mustn’t——­You must be more impersonal!”

He glowered at her like a downy young owl.  She wasn’t sure but she thought that he muttered, “I’m damned if I will.”  She considered with wholesome fear the perils of meddling with other people’s destinies, and she said timidly, “Hadn’t we better start back now?”

He mused, “You’re younger than I am.  Your lips are for songs about rivers in the morning and lakes at twilight.  I don’t see how anybody could ever hurt you. . . .  Yes.  We better go.”

He trudged beside her, his eyes averted.  Hugh experimentally took his thumb.  He looked down at the baby seriously.  He burst out, “All right.  I’ll do it.  I’ll stay here one year.  Save.  Not spend so much money on clothes.  And then I’ll go East, to art-school.  Work on the side-tailor shop, dressmaker’s.  I’ll learn what I’m good for:  designing clothes, stage-settings, illustrating, or selling collars to fat men.  All settled.”  He peered at her, unsmiling.

“Can you stand it here in town for a year?”

“With you to look at?”

“Please!  I mean:  Don’t the people here think you’re an odd bird? (They do me, I assure you!)”

“I don’t know.  I never notice much.  Oh, they do kid me about not being in the army—­especially the old warhorses, the old men that aren’t going themselves.  And this Bogart boy.  And Mr. Hicks’s son—­he’s a horrible brat.  But probably he’s licensed to say what he thinks about his father’s hired man!”

“He’s beastly!”

They were in town.  They passed Aunt Bessie’s house.  Aunt Bessie and Mrs. Bogart were at the window, and Carol saw that they were staring so intently that they answered her wave only with the stiffly raised hands of automatons.  In the next block Mrs. Dr. Westlake was gaping from her porch.  Carol said with an embarrassed quaver: 

“I want to run in and see Mrs. Westlake.  I’ll say good-by here.”

She avoided his eyes.