Summary

Book 3 begins after Claude and Enid’s return to Frankfort, where Claude continues to work for his father’s farm. Although she completes all her domestic duties, Enid is often out of town supporting prohibition meetings. Claude watches a gourd vine on his porch blossom, feeling grateful the plant “[does] so lustily what it was put there to do” (93). Claude looks at the moon and feels an intense kinship with it, thinking the moon “comprehended all” but “betrayed no secrets” (94). Claude then catches himself, thinking “it was better not to think about such things” (94). The narrator then reports that “when [Claude] could he avoided thinking” (94).

The narrator then implies Claude and Enid have a frigid marriage, and Claude takes refuge in the “timber claim” where he “let his imagination play with his life,” and imagines he “had not tied himself...