“You—­you’re sayin’ a good many hasty things to-night, Hanna.”

“Maybe.”

He plucked at a gray-wool knot in the coverlet.

“Mighty hasty things.”

She turned, then, plunging her hands into the great suds of feather bed, the whole thrust of her body toward him.

“‘Hasty’!  Is eight years hasty?  Is eight years of buried-alive hasty?  I’m goin’, John Burkhardt; this time I’m goin’ sure—­sure as my name is Hanna Long.”

“Goin’ where, Hanna?”

“Goin’ where each day ain’t like a clod of mud on my coffin.  Goin’ where there’s a chance for a woman like me to get a look-in on life before she’s as skinny a hex at twenty-seven as old lady Scog—­as—­like this town’s full of.  I’m goin’ to make my own livin’ in my own way, and I’d like to see anybody try to stop me.”

“I ain’t tryin’, Hanna.”

She drew back in a flash of something like surprise.

“You’re willin’, then?”

“No, Hanna, not willin’.”

“You can’t keep me from it.  Incompatibility is grounds!”

The fires of her rebellion, doused for the moment, broke out again, flaming in her cheeks.

He raised himself to his elbow, regarding her there in her flush, the white line of her throat whiter because of it.  She was strangely, not inconsiderably taller.

“Why, Hanna, what you been doin’ to yourself?”

Her hand flew to a new and elaborately piled coiffure, a half-fringe of curling-iron, little fluffed out tendrils escaping down her neck.

“In—­incompatibility is grounds.”

“It’s mighty becomin’, Hanna.  Mighty becomin’.”

“It’s grounds, all right!”

“‘Grounds’?  Grounds for what, Hanna?”

She looked away, her throat distending as she swallowed.

“Divorce.”

There was a pause, then so long that she had a sense of falling through its space.

“Look at me, Hanna!”

She swung her gaze reluctantly to his.  He was sitting erect now, a kind of pallor setting in behind the black beard.

“Leggo!” she said, loosening his tightening hand from her wrists.  “Leggo; you hurt!”

“I—­take it when a woman uses that word in her own home, she means it.”

“This one does.”

“You’re a deacon’s wife.  Things—­like this are—­are pretty serious with people in our walk of life.  We—­’ain’t learned in our communities yet not to take the marriage law as of God’s own makin’.  I’m a respected citizen here.”

“So was Ed Bevins.  It never hurt his hide.”

“But it left her with a black name in the town.”

“Who cares?  She don’t.”

“It’s no good to oppose a woman, Hanna, when she’s made up her mind; but
I’m willin’ to meet you half-way on this thing.  Suppose we try it again. 
I got some plans for perkin’ things up a bit between us.  Say we join the
Buckeye Bowling Club, and—­”