There was something else Sarah felt, and that was that she was the young woman present, something she had never felt before her sister left them. A new discovery: she did not have to feel, or pretend to feel, of second importance. She was first for the first time in her whole life; and her sudden realization of the fact made her a little drunk, along with the warm day and its dry air with a thousand fragrances making one to her, and the spacious land stretching over fields and hills, through woods to the horizon.

And Leon, sitting there on the high seat alert, erect, and handsome, was not merely a part of this; he was Beulah Land.

As for Leon, life had been dim for him of late; he had been second to others and to the events that centered about them. Now suddenly he felt himself a whole man, the master, not just “young master,” the courtesy title, which was sometimes used, he knew, in a scornful way; he was in fact master of the estate they drove through.

And Sarah—how had he not noticed her before in Savannah? She was not only pretty. In the open air and light where he had seldom seen her before, she was far prettier than he remembered Lauretta as being. She was real and alive and of the moment, without patina and without need of it. He felt himself delighted with her, eager to press the advantage of their earlier acquaintance. How glad he was Lauretta had done whatever they said she had done. Sarah here, Sarah now, was natural and right.

When he turned the horses in from the main road to the private road that went through the orchard to the front circle drive of the house, he saw Floyd, who had put new shoes on a young mare and was accustoming the horse to them by riding her along the side of the drive.

Leon’s and Floyd’s eyes met at the same instant.

“Hey, Floyd!”

“Yee-oh!” Floyd called, laughing. And Floyd, perhaps because of the fine weather and seeing his friend sitting proud and important, felt like a boy on his first horse, and let go the bridle rein for an instant to slap the mare’s flanks with both hands. Grabbing the rein again, he galloped up the drive toward the house laughing and shouting, “Company coming! Company coming!” which the guests declared was the finest welcome they could imagine to Beulah Land.

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