For an hour Belle Carpenter and the young reporter walked about under the trees in the sweet night air.  George Willard was full of big words.  The sense of power that had come to him during the hour in the darkness in the alleyway remained with him and he talked boldly, swaggering along and swinging his arms about.  He wanted to make Belle Carpenter realize that he was aware of his former weakness and that he had changed.  “You’ll find me different,” he declared, thrusting his hands into his pockets and looking boldly into her eyes.  “I don’t know why but it is so.  You’ve got to take me for a man or let me alone.  That’s how it is.”

Up and down the quiet streets under the new moon went the woman and the boy.  When George had finished talking they turned down a side street and went across a bridge into a path that ran up the side of a hill.  The hill began at Waterworks Pond and climbed upward to the Winesburg Fair Grounds.  On the hillside grew dense bushes and small trees and among the bushes were little open spaces carpeted with long grass, now stiff and frozen.

As he walked behind the woman up the hill George Willard’s heart began to beat rapidly and his shoulders straightened.  Suddenly he decided that Belle Carpenter was about to surrender herself to him.  The new force that had manifested itself in him had, he felt, been at work upon her and had led to her conquest.  The thought made him half drunk with the sense of masculine power.  Although he had been annoyed that as they walked about she had not seemed to be listening to his words, the fact that she had accompanied him to this place took all his doubts away.  “It is different.  Everything has become different,” he thought and taking hold of her shoulder turned her about and stood looking at her, his eyes shining with pride.

Belle Carpenter did not resist.  When he kissed her upon the lips she leaned heavily against him and looked over his shoulder into the darkness.  In her whole attitude there was a suggestion of waiting.  Again, as in the alleyway, George Willard’s mind ran off into words and, holding the woman tightly he whispered the words into the still night.  “Lust,” he whispered, “lust and night and women.”

George Willard did not understand what happened to him that night on the hillside.  Later, when he got to his own room, he wanted to weep and then grew half insane with anger and hate.  He hated Belle Carpenter and was sure that all his life he would continue to hate her.  On the hillside he had led the woman to one of the little open spaces among the bushes and had dropped to his knees beside her.  As in the vacant lot, by the laborers’ houses, he had put up his hands in gratitude for the new power in himself and was waiting for the woman to speak when Ed Handby appeared.