“No, I don’t believe so. Some people would have. But with her it was something else also. More than habit or pride too. Some part of her had come to know herself as the woman who worked for me. Of course she took the money home with her, spent some part of it too I’d guess. Most everybody needs more money than what they have. But that wasn’t the point that night in the kitchen and she knew it too. All I was asking was did she want her time all for herself. And she did. I sent an envelope of cash over there every year at Christmas until she died three years ago but that isn’t the point. It wasn’t for me and it wasn’t for her. And we both knew that.”

Foster sat with his hands folded together in his lap. “You’re saying she felt bound to you someway and you set her loose from that.”

“See now, you’re making a leap all the way from one end to the other. It’s true that if I hadn’t done that she’d most surely kept on working for me until she died or grew too sick to work. But all I can tell you is she realized I’d had enough. What she said that night when the dishes were done and she had on her coat and shawl for the walk home, was, ‘You get sick of it, don’t call on me.’ She’d seen the mess a man can make sinking into his own self. Which is what I wanted and intended and she knew it. So don’t confuse that with either meanness or bigheartedness on my part. It wasn’t neither one.”

“I don’t know why you’re telling me all this,” Foster said. “Unless it’s part of some complicated excuse for something else you’ve got to tell me.”

Mebane looked at him, his old-man’s mouth a dry purse. The amusement in his eyes dry also. He said, as if trying it out or as if it might even be humorous, “A man is the sum of his parts.”

“Maybe,” said Foster. “I don’t know. Seems to me though, the last one who could do that sum would be the one involved.”

“Who else? Who else would know?”

“I don’t know. The ones around you maybe.”

“No. Because every man is at least two men. One of those known only to himself.”

“Maybe.”