e laughed again at his own discomfiture. There
were the two extremes, the super-sophisticated person who could control
his voice so that it did not give him away, and the utter rustic whose
voice had such a brute inexpressiveness that his meaning was as
effectively hidden. He would try again. He said casually, "She's an
enough-sight better-looking specimen than her husband. However does it
happen that the best-looking women are always caught by that sort of
chimpanzees? How did she ever happen to marry 'Gene, anyhow?"

The other man answered, literally. "I don't know how she did happen to
marry him. She don't come from around here. 'Gene was off working in a
mill, down in Massachusetts, Adams way, and they got married there. They
only come back here to live after they'd had all that trouble with
lawyers and lost their wood-land. 'Gene's father died about that time.
It cut him pretty hard. And 'Gene and his wife they come back to run the
farm."

At this point they saw, looking in at the lighted dumb-show in the
house, that new arrivals had come. Vincent felt a premonitory clap of
his heart and set his teeth in his cigarette. Yes, Marise had come, now
appeared in the doorway, tall, framed in green-leafed branches, the
smooth pale oval of her face lighted by the subtle smile, those dark
long eyes! By God! What would he not give to know what went on behind
that smile, those eyes!

She was unwinding from her head the close, black nun-like wrap that
those narrow primitive country-women far away on the other side of the
globe had chosen to express their being united to another human being.
And a proper lugubrious symbol it made for their lugubrious,
prison-like, primitive view of the matter.

Now she had it off. Her sleek, gleaming dark head stood poised on her
long, thick, white throat. What a woman! What she could be in any
civilized setting!

She was talking to Nelly Powers now, who had come back and stood facing
her in one of those superb poses of hers, her yellow braids heavy as
gold. It was Brunhilda talking to Leonardo da Vinci's Ste. Anne. No,
heavens no! Not a saint, a musty, penitential negation like a saint!
Only of course, the Ste. Anne wasn't a saint either, but da Vinci's
glorious Renaissance stunt at showing what an endlessly desirable woman
he could make if he put his mind on it.

"What say, we go in," suggested Frank, casting away the butt of his
cigarette. "I think I hear old Nate beginning to tune up.