“Shall we see you again?”

“Of course,” said Lewis, “Dad and I will come over to say good-by.”

“Come for supper,” said Natalie.  “I won’t be home in the morning.  Good night.”

Lewis walked slowly to the house, Natalie had not given him time to ask why she would not be at home in the morning.  He grudged giving that morning to any foreign interest.  He wondered what he could do to kill all that time alone.

The next afternoon he and Leighton drove over to Aunt Jed’s in state.  Leighton was still held by his mood—­a mood that was not morose so much as distant.  Lewis himself was in no good humor.  The morning had palled on him even more than he had feared.  Now he felt himself chilled when he longed to be warmed.  Where his spirit cried out for sunshine, his father’s mood threw only shadow.  How tangible and real a thing was that shadow he never realized until they reached Aunt Jed’s and found that it had got there before them.

Despite mammy’s art, the supper was a sad affair.  It was not the sadness of close-knitted hearts about to part that seized upon the company.  Love can thrive on the bitter-sweet of that pain.  It was a deeper sadness—­the sadness that in evil hours seizes upon the individual soul and says:  “You stand alone.  From this desert place of the mind you can flee by the road of any trifling distraction, but into it no companion ever enters.  You stand alone.”  “I myself,” cries the soul of man, and recoils from that brink of infinite distance.  Such was the mood that Leighton had imposed on those he touched that day, for, while he could take no company into his desert place, by simply going there he could drive the rest each to his far wilderness.

After supper they sat long in a silence without communion.  It became unbearable.  In such an hour bodily nearness becomes a repulsion.  Lewis rebelled.  He looked indignantly at Natalie.  She too was young.  Why did not her youth revolt?  But Natalie wasn’t feeling young that night.  She did not answer his look.

“Dad,” said Lewis, “I think we’d better go.  We have to make an early start.”

“All right,” said Leighton, listlessly.  “Tell Silas.”

Lewis rose and turned to Natalie.

“Aren’t you coming?” he asked.

Natalie got up slowly, and drew a filmy white scarf—­a cloud, she called it—­about her shoulders.  There seemed an alien chill in the air.

As they walked toward the barn, a memory that had been playing hide-and-seek with Lewis’s mind throughout the evening suddenly met him full in the face of thought.  He stopped and stared at Natalie.  She was dressed in red.  What was it they had called that birthday dress of long ago?  Accordion silk.  The breeze caught Natalie’s skirt and played with it, opening out the soft pleats and closing them again.  The breeze seized upon the ends of the cloud and lifted them fitfully as though they were wings too tired for full flight.