On the street as he walked beside the girl new and daring thoughts had come into Seth Richmond’s mind.  He began to regret his decision to get out of town.  “It would be something new and altogether delightful to remain and walk often through the streets with Helen White,” he thought.  In imagination he saw himself putting his arm about her waist and feeling her arms clasped tightly about his neck.  One of those odd combinations of events and places made him connect the idea of love-making with this girl and a spot he had visited some days before.  He had gone on an errand to the house of a farmer who lived on a hillside beyond the Fair Ground and had returned by a path through a field.  At the foot of the hill below the farmer’s house Seth had stopped beneath a sycamore tree and looked about him.  A soft humming noise had greeted his ears.  For a moment he had thought the tree must be the home of a swarm of bees.

And then, looking down, Seth had seen the bees everywhere all about him in the long grass.  He stood in a mass of weeds that grew waist-high in the field that ran away from the hillside.  The weeds were abloom with tiny purple blossoms and gave forth an overpowering fragrance.  Upon the weeds the bees were gathered in armies, singing as they worked.

Seth imagined himself lying on a summer evening, buried deep among the weeds beneath the tree.  Beside him, in the scene built in his fancy, lay Helen White, her hand lying in his hand.  A peculiar reluctance kept him from kissing her lips, but he felt he might have done that if he wished.  Instead, he lay perfectly still, looking at her and listening to the army of bees that sang the sustained masterful song of labor above his head.

On the bench in the garden Seth stirred uneasily.  Releasing the hand of the girl, he thrust his hands into his trouser pockets.  A desire to impress the mind of his companion with the importance of the resolution he had made came over him and he nodded his head toward the house.  “Mother’ll make a fuss, I suppose,” he whispered.  “She hasn’t thought at all about what I’m going to do in life.  She thinks I’m going to stay on here forever just being a boy.”

Seth’s voice became charged with boyish earnestness.  “You see, I’ve got to strike out.  I’ve got to get to work.  It’s what I’m good for.”

Helen White was impressed.  She nodded her head and a feeling of admiration swept over her.  “This is as it should be,” she thought.  “This boy is not a boy at all, but a strong, purposeful man.”  Certain vague desires that had been invading her body were swept away and she sat up very straight on the bench.  The thunder continued to rumble and flashes of heat lightning lit up the eastern sky.  The garden that had been so mysterious and vast, a place that with Seth beside her might have become the background for strange and wonderful adventures, now seemed no more than an ordinary Winesburg back yard, quite definite and limited in its outlines.