Rooster and Trudy, his father and mother, behaved toward him very much as they had before his marriage, with the difference that they never seemed to find mood or occasion to touch him. He was not treated like a leper, but he was not treated like a beloved brother and son either, and they had always been a family for touching in easy, comfortable ways they were scarce aware of.

Selma did not sit and brood, nor did she cackle or sob in corridors after midnight, as those reckoned to be of disturbed mind are supposed to do. She wanted little to do with anybody. She ate in her room, one of the kitchen girls bringing trays for her and Pauline. She most often appeared calm, both because for her the thing was over and done, if not resolved, and because Pauline had a quieting effect upon her. Pauline was the only person in the main house at Beulah Land who might be said to be happy. She had loved Selma all her life, and now she was with her every minute of the day and night.

They did not talk very much, but Pauline was always conscious of Selma, could follow the slightest alteration in her mood without a word having been spoken—by a gesture, a way of sitting, or getting up from a chair, the tempo of her breathing, the tensing and relaxing of a hand. These were obvious and easy indicators of mood which anyone attentive to Selma might have read. Pauline’s knowledge went further than that, through the subtlest realms of perception and intuition; it was awareness that included but went beyond what is called “love.” Perfectly satisfied with the way she spent each day; Pauline’s contentment created a healing atmosphere that Selma could not but take strength from.

Leon did not see Bonard during those days, for Bonard once again rode or drove a buggy into Highboro to “read law” at the office Felix kept more as a private retreat than as a place of business, although his law books were there, and there business was sometimes transacted.

At Beulah Land people went about their business, if they had any, and sat or wandered bored if they did not. Leon was one of the latter until he took to hanging about Floyd’s smith shop. The new closeness of Selma and Pauline may have had something to do with suggesting it. Kinship and blood are even more complex than is generally supposed.