They had eaten the sugar bread and night had come. The wagon moved slowly along in the unreality of the dark between faint rows of fence and trees, or it droned out upon a free upland or sank into cool hollows. Ellen knew the steps of the horses, the roan one from the black, and Jasper was a warmth beside her, gathering into a kindness that broke into endearments or rested in quiet. Or they left the highway and went unevenly through a lane and over a farm way, and Jasper walked ahead in the dark to lead the horses. Then she left the wagon and waited in the dark while Jasper said a few words to the driver and sent him back on his way.

They were inside the house, lighting a dim lamp that sat on a table. There were four things to be seen in the dim light of the lamp, a bed, a chair, a stove, and a table, but each moment of the room stood out sharp and intense. The man who owned the farm had promised to build another room to the house before spring, and Jasper took her to the door and pointed out the fields as they lay stretched forth in the dark, invisible, the tobacco barn on the hill, unseen, the way to the spring, the path to the stables, the silo, the thicket, all dark. Jasper built a fire in the stove and brought food to cook and cool water from the spring, walking quickly back and forth. He had bought some cups and plates at the store. They worked hurriedly to catch up with their own swift life and to overtake the intense moments that stood out luminously between the walls of the cabin. She put the flour into the tray and sifted it with the soda and the salt, or she stirred in the sour milk with her fingers and shaped the dough, or Jasper held her close to his body, and she felt the wide limits of her dream reach far into the dark to take up the fields, the silo, the barns, the spring, and the path.