He longed for her to say more and knew that she would not. He understood surprisingly little, and that little only in the haziest way, of the history of Roscoe Elk and the owners of Beulah Land. He knew, of course, that he had been born there and lived his childhood there until that day he and his brother and his mother had left in their newly acquired carriage, to the sound of derisive laughter from the slaves who had hidden to watch them go. He knew that there was bad feeling, but he did not know why there was. No one had dared tell him, or even hint, what had happened between his mother and Leon Kendrick. He had no reason to know the particular ironies in the attachment of Roman and Sarah, of Roman and Rachel.

Whereas Junior had made sly surmises that brought him close enough to the truth, Alonzo had not even speculated. He was not a bad young man, only ignorant and lonely and given to indulging himself when and where he could. If Sarah had let herself be more than formally polite on their chance meetings, she might have helped him toward being better than he had been taught to be, or he might even have begun to learn by himself. But she could not, seeing him only as an extension of her enemy Roscoe Elk. Since she was not friendly, he began to think of her as someone to overcome, someone to be made to see that he was a man and therefore to be dealt with as a man.

Once in the winter past when they met, each alone and on horseback, he drew up, but she cantered her horse past him. In her carelessness and haste to separate herself from him, she lost a glove she had held in her hands as they loosened on the reins of her horse. He dismounted, calling after her to tell her of her loss, but she went on as though she did not hear.