“I was walking … Mrs. Fanning has been kind enough to let me sit down and chat with her for a while.”

Ty blinked his pale eyes. “Did the shots startle you?” he asked, a shade too kindly.

There was a vise of silence, for a moment. “No,” Dan said. “We’ve had considerable shooting, you know, out where I’ve been.”

“You cut off your whiskers, didn’t you?”

“Yes. Last night.”

The young officer shrugged. “Damn it all, Irene. Why’d you let me sleep so long?”

“It wasn’t long. Just a little time.”

“You knew mother was expecting us back. For a reason.”

Slowly, the girl began to climb to her feet. Tyler did not move. Dan offered his hand to her, but she waved him aside. The loose gown hung from her tight waist, badly wrinkled by her sitting upon it. She shook out her skirts: you could hear the watery sound of her petticoats underneath. She looked steadily at her husband. “I don’t care if we miss those Harrisburg people altogether,” she said to him. This was something Dan was not expected or intended to hear; he turned away. “It’s much more pleasant sitting here in the sun. And much better for you to be resting out in the fresh air.”

“The devil it is,” Tyler snapped. He swung on his heel and walked toward the carriage. Then he spun around to say something more, but he began to cough; the words curdled in his throat; he coughed with violence and some pain until his face was a sallow red. “Come on!” he cried at last, catching his breath. “We’re too late for any use!”

His wife moved slowly after him. She took a few steps, then turned to bow to Dan. “I enjoyed our talk,” she said. A rag body, a china face all expressionless in its enameled grin.

“Maybe,” said Dan, “we’ll meet again. In—another field.”

He did not intend to utter those words. For so many days he had been kept by stifling exigencies from saying the things that were in his mind, and this relaxation, this melting down under a warm sun, had made him speak to her—load the trivial words with all the meaning they would bear … He felt her eyes leave her body and come over to him and glue against his own and search the hidden darkness within, and wonder what truth he was speaking and how much of that truth she should accept … She turned swiftly. She went away through the short green blades.

Ty called, “Bale. Give you a lift to town.”

“Kind of you … I must go back through the cemetery.”