He would go.

‘A night is short,’ he whispered, ‘Sunup would soon come.’

He would go. He drew away from her and arose, gathering his hat from where it lay on the floor by the door. Ellen moved to the space beyond the hearth and stood in the dim light of the last ember, and he returned once to her there. Then he put on his hat and went swiftly out at the door. She lingered for a little on the stones, kneeling there, forgetting the night, looking into the heart of the coal that throbbed among the hot ashes. Then she covered the fire, using the shovel noiselessly so that Nellie need not be awakened, shovelling the dry grey ashes from the wings of the fireplace and banking them over the living ember that it might be preserved. When she had covered the fire securely she went softly up the stair.

The cold lingered through the first days of the week, thawing a little in the mid-day but freezing again at night. Ellen moved through these days in a hush of expectancy, finding small tasks, mending a garment or searching out a ribbon, preparing for the thaw and tending the flame of her own beauty. Jonas would go to town at the end of the week and after that he would come again.

Once she awakened from her reverie and remembered the words of the men who had sat beside Dan O’Shay’s fire and remembered their threat. All the people of all the farms knew, then, of Scott MacMurtrie’s secret, she reflected, and her knowledge of it was no longer a furtive knowledge hidden deeply in her own mind although her mouth was closed dumbly upon it. She thought of all the farms as waiting to see what Miss Cassie would do, watching the house among the cedars, all the other houses turned that way to see, Gowan’s and Wakefield’s and Dorsey’s and Fairhope Church. Miss Cassie would know soon and when she knew there would be a different feel in the air and another way of thinking in the farms. Her own reverie closed about her and she left Miss Cassie out, centring about her ribbon and her bit of lace, her hems and buttons made neat, and, as her reverie grew and became real, the air grew mild and the hold of the frost, at first loosened, became lax and then fell away. The ice would rot away altogether and the earth become pliable, and her reverie grew intense, remembering each moment of the night when Jonas had stayed long with her, distilling each moment of its sweeter fruit. Jonas would come again; there would be another night; it would be as if they had not spent the interval apart.