She said, “We must—” and made as if to rise.

He fastened his arms around her body, and drew her down. He kissed her roughly, again and again … Her lips trembled against his neck. “Oh, I’m mad,” she sobbed.

“I love you, Irene. I—”

“Not—not—”

“I know it is. I can’t forget.”

The colt neighed and stamped, annoyed with waiting.

Irene said, “I must—go. Dazzle … he’s fractious; he’ll break loose! And here we— Like this—”

He crushed her into the yielding grass.

“Madness,” she cried weakly. “Darling, darling! Oh, God, I feel like a strumpet. It never was like this before!”

He said, “Not another flicker of time … nothing but you—”

“The world will—kill us, for this … Outraged—”

He lifted her body close beside his; on their knees they faced each other in the reeling shade. “You’ll divorce Fanning,” Dan cried. “You’ve got to do it. You don’t love him. We’ll go west at once. Cut loose from Gettysburg, from—Oh, my beloved—” the words poured from him, inexhaustible fund, he could go on saying these things to her, day after day without end—“think what it will be! Casting everything else—”

“You don’t know me. Only this sin we’ve done—”

“Call it sin. God knows it’s beautiful.”

She groaned, “Oh, I’m shameless. But I desire you, desire you, desire you—” She shuddered, and closed her eyes. She struck fiercely against his chest. “We must go, at once.”

“Tonight,” he said. “My dear, tonight—”

They stood up. She brushed blindly at the netted branches. “It’s too terrible—that way. Because I leave the house, with both of them there—I feel like a thief, or a murderer, or— Since Sunday I’ve lain in my room, pretending to read, trying to think. It’s as if the world had been cracked, far and wide, and I was afraid to step outside for fear I’d sink through.”

“Listen,” he said. “Dear, can you listen? I’ll buy a good team today. We’ll go away—tonight. I can draw a thousand dollars out of the bank at once, if need be. We need not come back; everything can be settled, later.”

She shook her head. “If you stop to think, that is childish. And I would never do such a thing to Tyler and his parents, no matter how little love I bear them. No—we must consider, for a long time.”

“You doubt me. You don’t believe—”

“I doubt myself—Dan.” Her face flushed lightly as she said the word. It was as if in speaking his name, sanely and in no great stress of passion, she had committed herself to a greater intimacy than ever before.