Over and over Ellen’s mind reverted to the little baby in Jule Nestor’s house, a child that looked like Jonas, nursing Jule Nestor’s dirty milk and lying in Jule Nestor’s foul bed. The baby, a month old now, would be lying, little and weak, crying for food, being fed, crying for Jule, pushing its head into Jule’s breast, closing its eyes to sleep.

‘I been in torment ever since I knowed,’ he said. ‘I can’t think it out. Seems like it oughtn’t to be. My little gal that looks like my own mammy. And Eli, he’s my cousin, our own kin.’

The child that lay in Jule Nestor’s bed could not be denied a place in her thought now. A great emptiness spread over the farm and over her past, as if life itself had emptied its inner portion and had given birth to some remote matter. Jonas was troubled and his thought went far from her and had another centre, gathering around his hurt. He wanted to be beside her but he wanted her there to share his pain, and she hated his pain for a moment. A part of him was gone and in the loss she was confused in a crossing of demands, denials, and finalities. Something was lost to her. She thought continually of the child in Jule’s bed, its mouth pushed into Jule’s breast.

‘I been in torment,’ Jonas said.

‘You knowed two weeks back?’

‘Yes. Eli, he told me two weeks ago. I thought I’d tell you, Elleen. I was in torment a week and then I says I’d tell Elleen. I reckon you think I’m right o’nary.’

‘I think it’s a… pity,’ she said.

‘I thought you might want me to go away far off, outen your sight.’

‘No.’

‘I thought you might so want.’

‘Do you want to go off, outen my sight?’

‘God knows I do not. I want to stay close by if it ain’t a trouble to you.’

‘You don’t need to go.’

‘I’d like to see you every day. I’d like to be beside you a little every day. For a while. I’d like to now, if it ain’t a trouble to you.’

‘You could come if you’re of a mind to.’

‘It was in my mind corn-cutten time and after, all along through the hay, to want to ask you to marry.’

The sun slanted its last long rays through the farm, falling away weakly to its early setting, and the air grew more chilly. Her loss lay as a pain along her empty arms, but beside her Jonas still sat, speaking half haltingly from time to time, recalling her to the trend of his troubled thought.

‘I been in torment,’ he said. ‘Maybe you could tell me what to do.’

‘I’d have to study it out. I can’t now see there’s e’er thing to do.’

‘Whatever you say I’ll do, no matter what ’tis.’

‘I can’t see e’er thing to do now. Maybe when I study it over a spell.’