Then she was in her own room, and had turned the wooden button on the door. Through the open window came army sounds: the axles and the braying, a lunatic scream, the crackle of flames and the sound of a banjo being tuned. A jovial soul was saying to Demon, “Then I’ll ask Gen’ral Lee to take you back fo’ to be his own nigger—he’s got jest scads of ’em—fool free niggers he’s cotched up Nawth,” and Demon was sullen. No, suh, young Mist Rebel.

Irene Lorrence, she exclaimed in crazy wonder, how does it happen that you are here? Still in the darkness and without lighting a candle or closing the shutters, she unfastened her clothing. Her girlhood came closer and more distinctly to her at every moment, rushing in a charge out of the caverns of the past. Years when she was a child, the baby years screaming behind. She saw the covers of forgotten but now familiar books; she tasted raspberry ice, she remembered the taste of muffins; she was rolling a hoop, she was practicing at the piano, now Aunt Cynthia was whispering in a voice brittle as straw: When you are older I shall tell you more. All girls are the same. There was a cat named Pumpkin, and it had a fit. She toiled for weeks in pink and blue cross-stitch, with an endless chain-stitch border: Pride is an evil which all do deplore. I pray for humility and for no more. Irene Victoria Lorrence 1849 … And in this babble of her life, she perceived the faces of playmates and little-known cousins, which speedily clustered and shaped themselves in one hideous amalgamation of features.

Jaws set tight, and ivory tusks framed in scrolled lips; a high, narrow forehead and eyes like green— All she’s good for, Yankee slut! Now she had slipped the night-dress over her head; the room and the outdoor and indoor sounds made a nasty whirl around her, she fell upon her bed.

Again she started up before any nature of sleep had come. Heavenly Father, she cried, Tyler—Tyler. I did that to him. Because I wanted to. I went seeking it. I found out what it was like, I craved it and went again and again. All that time he was believing me to be his wife, or else he was drugged with the disaster I brought upon him. The only peace he had was for a week after he left, and that was a false peace soon to be broken. The rebels declare that the whole Army of the Potomac is here, or on the way, and at this moment Tyler may be lying on a library table in some other house.