“It happened quite some time ago.  And both of them were so touchy, if anybody seemed to speak about it, that folks got in the way of letting it alone.  First Aunt Emma wouldn’t speak to her sister because she’d married the man she’d wanted, and then when Aunt Emma made out so well farmin’ and got so well off, why, then Mrs. Purdon wouldn’t try to make it up because she was so poor.  That was after Mr. Purdon had had his stroke of paralysis and they’d lost their farm and she’d taken to goin’ out sewin’—­not but what she was always perfectly satisfied with her bargain.  She always acted as though she’d rather have her husband’s old shirt stuffed with straw than any other man’s whole body.  He was a real nice man, I guess, Mr. Purdon was.”

There I had it—­the curt, unexpanded chronicle of two passionate lives.  And there I had also the key to Mrs. Purdon’s fury of independence.  It was the only way in which she could defend her husband against the charge, so damning in her world, of not having provided for his wife.  It was the only monument she could rear to her husband’s memory.  And her husband had been all there was in life for her!

I stood looking at her young kinswoman’s face, noting the granite under the velvet softness of its youth, and divining the flame underlying the granite.  I longed to break through her wall and to put my arms about her, and on the impulse of the moment I cast aside the pretense of casualness in our talk.

“Oh, my dear!” I said.  “Are you and ’Niram always to go on like this?  Can’t anybody help you?”

Ev’leen Ann looked at me, her face suddenly old and gray.  “No, ma’am; we ain’t going to go on this way.  We’ve decided, ’Niram and I have, that it ain’t no use.  We’ve decided that we’d better not go places together any more or see each other.  It’s too—­If ’Niram thinks we can’t”—­she flamed so that I knew she was burning from head to foot—­“it’s better for us not—­” She ended in a muffled voice, hiding her face in the crook of her arm.

Ah, yes; now I knew why Ev’leen Ann had shut out the passionate breath of the spring night!

I stood near her, a lump in my throat, but I divined the anguish of her shame at her involuntary self-revelation, and respected it.  I dared do no more than to touch her shoulder gently.

The door behind us rattled.  Ev’leen Ann sprang up and turned her face toward the wall.  Paul’s cousin came in, shuffling a little, blinking his eyes in the light of the unshaded lamp, and looking very cross and tired.  He glanced at us without comment as he went over to the sink.  “Nobody offered me anything good to drink,” he complained, “so I came in to get some water from the faucet for my nightcap.”

When he had drunk with ostentation from the tin dipper he went to the outside door and flung it open.

“Don’t you people know how hot and smelly it is in here?” he said, with his usual unceremonious abruptness.