The girl could not reason or understand, in the snare of this obsession, but the face with green-grape eyes stayed before her. It was a background, an awful platter whereon other faces were arranged like poached eggs, the ethereal paleness of them overlapping, melting together. Sometimes she pushed herself up through the cast of sore muscles: again she was in her bed, again there was summer night and wistaria and the dense moonlight outside. Sounds crowded close outside her door and window, a herd of them, and singly they slipped inside and made themselves known.

Dog barked. Not Cybo; Cybo was dead because he had barked. Surgeon in big knit socks, and the floor squeaked under him. Throat, throat, throat, the endless cough and swallow. Far away, the dog; far away the skirmishing wheels. That’s a shot—little round bubble from a hidden drum, tom-tom on the long ridges. Throat, throat, and there is a mystery of movement in the Fannings’ room; they suffer and grow old together.

How long, she thought, did I sleep? Went down into a mine shaft where ghoul-sounds existed amid my descent, the insects buzzing behind them. Oh God, it’s … the word was lost in other strangulations. Forever the wagons and teams encompassed the country; forever the laborers clicked their axes. Flat voice said contritely: Christ Almighty, let me die and get rid of this oooh.

They were downstairs. Dining room, sitting room, library and hall were paved with long-legged bundles. Water and lint and silver probes, and all night the flickering candles would feel sorry for them.

She helped the doctor until long after dark. These were rebels, but incapable of stealing horses. Sometimes, as a young girl, Irene had imagined herself in a war like tapestry design, and in that tapestry war she held cups to thankful lips, she put her hands on clean, dying brows, and felt the skin of knights turn to clay as she touched them. Now she had Gretel bring a sack of bran from the storeroom, and together they worked in the kitchen, tearing clean white rags into sixteen-inch lengths, folding once, stitching the sides, pouring a stuffing of loose bran, doubling the seam at the end and basting hastily across. They must have made four dozen pads, and the surgeon said that he could use more in the morning.

Horror in the barn, wild horror in the carriage house. The gig, the carriage and the old sleigh had been dragged out to make room for straw and the long rows which lay in it. A lantern hung upon a nail and watched the men turning heads, twitching, or becoming fatefully quiet. There were a few horses in the yard, and always someone at the well, but for the most part the invaders stayed away from the house; only a few soldiers came and went, always in pairs, and always carrying burdens between them when they came.