The dog began: I-yee-yee, I-yee-yee! … He shrieked it as if he had held the sound ready for this emergency; he had been shot; he knew what to do. He dove for the pasture fence and wriggled under. I-yee-yee, I-yee-yee … came up across the butchered carrot rows; his hind quarters were beginning to drag, he left a thick trail of blood behind him. He was crawling, now; the tongue lolled out, the eyes were rolling. He snaked toward the back porch, his cries still rusty and piercing, but weaker at every breath. Irene stepped over the body of the freckled soldier; she went down to the dog, and meant to lift him in her arms, hideous as he was. His eyes were back in his head and the froth matted his mouth. He stopped his scream on a high, chopped note, a bird-like sound, and lay with his hind legs stretched foolishly behind him and the thin urine tickling out from under his belly.

Chapter 7

7.

Eva Duffey thought, That man. I’d like to wring his neck … Each day she made such an exclamation within her mind, but she had waited thirty-two years without carrying out her threatened desire. This morning she knew well enough where the doctor was going when he drove away; she could not have called after him, Stay with me because I need you, and you are apt to be killed. There may be a great deal of pain out there by the Sem, but there is always a great deal of pain in the world. Stay, Adam—stay—

Her enduring love was of the sort which exhibits itself in small disparagements, in caustic bantering—the refined and dangerous emotion of a woman who has but a small store of active affection, and only one opening through which to shed it, and only one person ever to shed it upon.