dropped
his hand on her thin-covered shoulder, she said, too cheerily, "I
thought I heard you moaning. So silly of me. Good night, dear."

V

She did not see Erik for a fortnight, save once at church and once when
she went to the tailor shop to talk over the plans, contingencies, and
strategy of Kennicott's annual campaign for getting a new suit. Nat
Hicks was there, and he was not so deferential as he had been. With
unnecessary jauntiness he chuckled, "Some nice flannels, them
samples, heh?" Needlessly he touched her arm to call attention to the
fashion-plates, and humorously he glanced from her to Erik. At home she
wondered if the little beast might not be suggesting himself as a rival
to Erik, but that abysmal bedragglement she would not consider.

She saw Juanita Haydock slowly walking past the house--as Mrs. Westlake
had once walked past.

She met Mrs. Westlake in Uncle Whittier's store, and before that alert
stare forgot her determination to be rude, and was shakily cordial.

She was sure that all the men on the street, even Guy Pollock and Sam
Clark, leered at her in an interested hopeful way, as though she were
a notorious divorcee. She felt as insecure as a shadowed criminal. She
wished to see Erik, and wished that she had never seen him. She fancied
that Kennicott was the only person in town who did not know all--know
incomparably more than there was to know--about herself and Erik. She
crouched in her chair as she imagined men talking of her, thick-voiced,
obscene, in barber shops and the tobacco-stinking pool parlor.

Through early autumn Fern Mullins was the only person who broke the
suspense. The frivolous teacher had come to accept Carol as of her
own youth, and though school had begun she rushed in daily to suggest
dances, welsh-rabbit parties.

Fern begged her to go as chaperon to a barn-dance in the country, on a
Saturday evening. Carol could not go. The next day, the storm crashed.

CHAPTER XXXII

I

CAROL was on the back porch, tightening a bolt on the baby's go-cart,
this Sunday afternoon. Through an open window of the Bogart house she
heard a screeching, heard Mrs. Bogart's haggish voice:

" . . . did too, and there's no use your denying it no you don't, you march
yourself right straight out of the house . . . never in my life heard of
such . . . never had nobody talk to me like . . . walk in the ways of sin
and nastiness . . . leave your clothes here, and heaven knows that's m