Clem, in a garden chair, glanced up from the Sunday paper. “Are you tired?” Without waiting for her reply, he folded the pages in his hand and dropped them on the grass beside him. “I don’t know why we read this—nothing but advertisements, and it makes one’s hands black.”

“I am tired, yes,” May pursued. “I was gardening all afternoon.”

Anyone would think gardening was a penance, Nettie observed to herself. She was sitting on the lawn, a book open in her lap. She thought that May contrived with her exhaustion to dispirit them all. The warm afternoon, the garden, the tray of empty glasses on the grass, succeeded in conveying foreboding and dissatisfaction; even the roses seemed to threaten violence, brimming over their plots of earth or arrested, scarlet, on the white wall of the house. Love, she thought, lowering her head over her book, is supposed to be enriching; instead I am poisoned (she exaggerated to hurt herself) with antagonism. Here she caught herself up—I am being an Incurable Romantic, she thought, and smiled. And yet, when I can be with him, just see him, I am happy. And I care more for him than for myself—I suppose that is enriching. I would literally die for him—only, no one wants that; they would rather you went on living and behaved reasonably. It has all happened too quickly. I keep thinking there will be a pause, I will find the place again, get back to being as I was, but that never comes. And yet the surprising part, too, is that it doesn’t make more difference. I would have thought such things made one worldly; instead, one becomes more vulnerable than ever.

Lifting her eyes from the unturned page, she could see at her right Clem’s legs and the side of his chair. His clothes, the wicker chair, the very newspaper he had flung down seemed involved in his personality. He is not vulnerable, she reflected. One can even see that from the way he sits, or moves, or reads the paper. He does not need my good opinion, as I need his. If he loves me, it is as a kind of indulgence to both of us. I cannot trust him completely—but, after all, one would not trust anyone completely; it would hardly be fair to them. It is the discrepancy that hurts—that I should be so aware of him, order my life, think, speak, clothe myself for him.

“Nettie, that color doesn’t suit you,” May remarked lazily. “If you’ll forgive my saying so.”

“Oh, really?” said Nettie, in an unforgiving voice.

“You should wear more blue, with your eyes. Don’t you think, Clem?”

Clem looked down at the back of Nettie’s head. “What color are her eyes?” he asked.

Only Nettie laughed.

“What a tiring day,” May said with a certain determination. “Let’s hope there won’t be a storm before you get back to town.”

Clem looked at his watch. “We should leave soon, if we want to arrive before dark.”