She walked nearer to the house, but not near enough for anyone inside to see her and join her, or to press her to join them inside. Presently, she knew by the sounds that came through windows and by the hurrying of Sallou and Sharon back and forth through the breezeway with platters of steaming food that the family party had gathered for morning food. She went carefully through the side yard where she was sure nobody would be. Nobody was. She straightened, gaining inches in her neck and legs as she merely relaxed and began to look around her.

The peacocks were molting, although it seemed to her they molted year-round. They were such nasty creatures; she really did not know why they continued to have them. It was Leon’s father who had started them, and no one had seen fit since to stop them. The front yard had not been swept, nor had she thought it would be yet. It would take a day for things to come back to normal. She bent and picked up a feather that one of the peacocks had dropped. Holding it against the light, she looked at its unlikely color blendings and thought that Rachel might fancy it, so she took it indoors with her.

Having decided to bathe her face and hands and to dress more conventionally now, she went up the stairs, aware as she did so of the dim but cheerful sounds from the dining room. At the top of the stairs, before she turned off to her and Leon’s room, she saw that Lauretta had not taken in her coffee tray. She shrugged. Lauretta was lazy and sleeping. Let her be. Or perhaps she had gone directly downstairs to join the others and not thought to do anything about the tray.

At the washstand in her room she took the towel Leon had used and wiped the bowl clean of its film of soap and a hair or two he had left. She poured water from the pitcher into the big bowl, and after taking off the few clothes she had put on earlier, she bathed herself quickly with soap and rag all over. She then dressed carefully but without dawdling, feeling better now, more herself, but still unsettled. She would hope to catch the family party toward the end of their breakfast and somehow in the general talk and speculation dilute and disperse the intense feelings she had been surprised by earlier. She went into the hall, leaving the door open so that the room would air.