“How is your stepmother feeling to-day, ’Niram?” I asked.

“Worse.”

’Niram came to a full stop with the word.  My cousin covered his satirical mouth with his hand.

“Can’t the doctor do anything to relieve her?” I asked.

’Niram moved at last from his Indian-like immobility.  He looked up under the brim of his felt hat at the skyline of the mountain, shimmering iridescent above us.  “He says maybe ’lectricity would help her some.  I’m goin’ to git her the batteries and things soon’s I git the rubber bandages paid for.”

There was a long silence.  My cousin stood up, yawning, and sauntered away toward the door.  “Shall I send Ev’leen Ann out to get the pitcher and glasses?” he asked in an accent which he evidently thought very humorously significant.

The strong face under the felt hat turned white, the jaw muscles set hard, but for all this show of strength there was an instant when the man’s eyes looked out with the sick, helpless revelation of pain they might have had when ’Niram was a little boy of ten, a third of his present age, and less than half his present stature.  Occasionally it is horrifying to see how a chance shot rings the bell.

“No, no!  Never mind!” I said hastily.  “I’ll take the tray in when I go.”

Without salutation or farewell ’Niram Purdon turned and went back to his work.

The porch was an enchanted place, walled around with starlit darkness, visited by wisps of breezes shaking down from their wings the breath of lilac and syringa, flowering wild grapes, and plowed fields.  Down at the foot of our sloping lawn the little river, still swollen by the melted snow from the mountains, plunged between its stony banks and shouted its brave song to the stars.

We three middle-aged people—­Paul, his cousin, and I—­had disposed our uncomely, useful, middle-aged bodies in the big wicker chairs and left them there while our young souls wandered abroad in the sweet, dark glory of the night.  At least Paul and I were doing this, as we sat, hand in hand, thinking of a May night twenty years before.  One never knows what Horace is thinking of, but apparently he was not in his usual captious vein, for after a long pause he remarked, “It is a night almost indecorously inviting to the making of love.”

My answer seemed grotesquely out of key with this, but its sequence was clear in my mind.  I got up, saying:  “Oh, that reminds me—­I must go and see Ev’leen Ann.  I’d forgotten to plan to-morrow’s dinner.”

“Oh, everlastingly Ev’leen Ann!” mocked Horace from his corner.  “Can’t you think of anything but Ev’leen Ann and her affairs?”

I felt my way through the darkness of the house, toward the kitchen, both doors of which were tightly closed.  When I stepped into the hot, close room, smelling of food and fire, I saw Ev’leen Ann sitting on the straight kitchen chair, the yellow light of the bracket-lamp beating down on her heavy braids and bringing out the exquisitely subtle modeling of her smooth young face.  Her hands were folded in her lap.  She was staring at the blank wall, and the expression of her eyes so startle and shocked me that I stopped short and would have retreated if it had not been too late.  She had seen me, roused herself, and said quietly, as though continuing conversation interrupted the moment before: