She could lie in her bed, but she could not go back to sleep. It started in her feet and in her finger tips—a hardy stiffening of desire, a sun warmth which blushed through bones and muscles. Now it’s in the ankles, the wrists, coming ferociously up the arms and into the soft hips, and leaves them hard as leather. Cautiously, and all in unholy terror, she slid her hands down across her abdomen. A thousand little veins went throb, throb under the thin layer of cotton cloth. Her breasts tightened, slowly, terribly … Made my own bed now I’m lying in it. Alone. Alone. Oh, good God in heaven.

And then it seemed as if she were dying, her breath battled with her pulse, the air came out of her lungs and in again, and did her no good, as if she had never breathed. She stared up into the frail gloom above. Wistaria, wistaria, a cat creature climbing—humid, alive, outside that room. A widow and never a wife, never, never.

Enormous lushness crawled over her body and weighted her down, crushed against her rigid mouth and bosom and loins, fed itself on the surge in her ears and the quiver of every striving cord. With a weak sob, she turned on her side. She could look through the open window … Far down in the dark pasture, a match flame twinkled, crimsoned in one isolated twist against the midnight, went out and there was nothingness. Only a lonely field, and a man walking there.

Another field, another field. She said rapidly to herself: “Oh, that fiend! I hate him, I hate him more than anything else in the world. Why did he have to say it? Maybe he knew I’d understand. I wonder if I showed it—the understanding. Is he there, walking back and forth, expecting me? He thinks I am a strumpet; it was an unpardonable insult for him to look at me as he did … I told him about my going out and lying in the sun. Now he’s living nearby, and walking in the field, and he told me—he told me—”

When she slid from the bed to the floor, it was with a solid purpose, a frantic capitulation. Mad. I’m mad. I cannot help it. I’ll go out, there is no hell like this, I’d rather be wounded in my innermost entrails as Tyler was.

Working with insensate hands, she found her slippers. There was a silk cloak in the wardrobe. She drew the folds loosely around her … Dark in the hall, oh, so dark. Mr. Fanning’s sleep whistled from his room: droning human sound, pathetic if she had stood there listening to it. She did not stay. She could smell her own body, talcum and flowers and burning flesh. Slowly, with deliberate caution, she went down through the black house.