Summary

Prefaced Quote (251) — "Good and evil we know in the field of this world grow up together almost inseparably. – John Milton" (251)

"A man's life of any worth is a continual allegory—and very few eyes can see [its] mystery." – John Keats" (251)

"If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence. – George Eliot" (251).

Winter (253-255) — Book II begins one year after Watson’s death. Lucius Watson was “hobbled by melancholy and introspection . . . he was thought unsociable” (253). Hoad and Carrie suggested that Lucius stay away from Chokoloskee for a while; the neighbors’ emotions were “a volatile bad mix of guilt and fear” and Lucius’s relation to Watson “would be asking for serious trouble...