That was not all—he labored with humor and good spirits. Dessie had to rise very early to get in her hand at the housework before Tom had it all done. She watched his great red happiness, and it was not light as Samuel’s happiness was light. It did not rise out of his roots and come floating up. He was manufacturing happiness as cleverly as he knew how, molding it and shaping it.

Dessie, who had more friends than anyone in the whole valley, had no confidants. When her trouble had come upon her she had not talked about it. And the pains were a secret in herself.

When Tom found her rigid and tight from the grabbing pain and cried in alarm, “Dessie, what’s the matter?” she controlled her face and said, “A little crick, that’s all. Just a little crick. I’m all right now.” And in a moment they were laughing.

They laughed a great deal, as though to reassure themselves. Only when Dessie went to her bed did her loss fall on her, bleak and unendurable. And Tom lay in the dark of his room, puzzled as a child. He could hear his heart beating and rasping a little in its beat. His mind fell away from thought and clung for safety to little plans, designs, machines.

Sometimes in the summer evenings they walked up the hill to watch the afterglow clinging to the tops of the western mountains and to feel the breeze drawn into the valley by the rising day-heated air. Usually they stood silently for a while and breathed in peacefulness. Since both were shy they never talked about themselves. Neither knew about the other at all.

It was startling to both of them when Dessie said one evening on the hill, “Tom, why don’t you get married?”

He looked quickly at her and away. He said, “Who’d have me?”

“Is that a joke or do you really mean it?”

“Who’d have me?” he said again. “Who’d want a thing like me?”

“It sounds to me as though you really mean it.” Then she violated their unstated code. “Have you been in love with someone?”

“No,” he said shortly.

“I wish I knew,” she said as though he had not answered.

Tom did not speak again as they walked down the hill. But on the porch he said suddenly, “You’re lonely here. You don’t want to stay.” He waited for a moment. “Answer me. Isn’t that true?”

“I want to stay here more than I want to stay anyplace else.” She asked, “Do you ever go to women?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Is it any good to you?”

“Not much.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

In silence they went back to the house. Tom lighted the lamp in the old living room. The horsehair sofa he had rebuilt raised its gooseneck against the wall, and the green carpet had tracks worn light between the doors.

Tom sat down by the round center table. Dessie sat on the sofa, and she could see that he was still embarrassed from his last admission. She thought, How pure he is, how unfit for a world that even she knew more about than he did. A dragon killer, he was, a rescuer of damsels, and his small sins seemed so great to him that he felt unfit and unseemly. She wished her father were here. Her father had felt greatness in Tom. Perhaps he would know now how to release it out of its darkness and let it fly free.