intimacy. He was tempestuously devoted to her, in a way that stirred
her blood. There was plenty of fire and passion in him; he had a temper,
and he would not come back. Isabel set her lips. "I guess," she said to
herself, "I'll have the burnfire." She thought of baking pound-cake, but
all the day before they had made cake for the picnic. She might wash the
blankets, or begin quilting, or clean the cistern. These dramas were
hardly exciting enough. The bonfire was better. She tied on her
father's hat and kilted her skirts. Then she brought out the iron rake
from the barn and settled the brush-heap anew. It was on the square of
land where she had had her perennial bed for three years, and now she
had decided to sow it down to grass. The litter of the garden was there,
with splinters of shingle and dried weeds, and next week her father
meant to burn it.

Isabel touched her match and stood by, watching, while the flames curled
and crept. Then they crackled among the brush, and she held them down
and got excited over it, and for an instant forgot Poole's Woods. It was
a good little fight out-of-doors in the hot sun, with a stream of fire
when it caught something dry, and then a column of smoke that made a
tang in the air and stirred her blood deliciously. Isabel was like a
creature of the earth combating something for the earth's good, and
getting hotter and more breathless every minute.

"What you doin' there?" called a voice from the gate.

She forgot the bonfire, remembering her father's hat and her kilted
skirts. Jim Bryant threw the gate shut with a clang and came striding
across the yard. He was tall and brown and sturdy. Isabel knew exactly
how he looked with his brow set and his blue eyes blazing.

"I've got a burnfire," she said, and raked the harder.

Jim came up and took the rake out of her hand. It seemed to be for no
purpose save that he had to do something. Isabel put up her head and
looked at him. There was hostility in her glance, but it was the
challenge of sex that meets and measures.

"I see the smoke comin' up over this way, an' I thought there was the
devil to pay," he said harshly. "What you carryin' on like this for?"

"I ain't carryin' on," said Isabel, from tense lips. "This is our land,
and I guess I can have a burnfire if I want to."

"Why ain't you at Poole's Woods?" The fire was dying down a little, but
one persistent flame moved like a snake in the dry stubble, and he
savagely stamped i