see what she might read in the younger woman's eyes. She stood
for a long moment, thinking. Finally she sat down on the grass under the
maple-tree, and motioned Marise to sit beside her. She meditated for a
long time, and then said, hesitatingly, "I don't know as a white person
could understand. White people . . . nobody ever asked me before."

She sat silent, her broad, dusty feet in their elastic-sided, worn,
run-over shoes straight before her, the thick, horny eyelids dropped
over her eyes, her scarred old face carved into innumerable deep lines.
Marise wondered if she had forgotten that anyone else was there. She
turned her own eyes away, finally, and looking at the mountains saw that
black thunderclouds were rolling up over the Eagle Rocks. Then the old
woman said, her eyes still dropped, "I tell you how my uncle told me,
seventy-five years ago. He said people are like fish in an underground
brook, in a black cave. He said there is a place, away far off from
where they live, where there is a crack in the rock. If they went 'way
off they could get a glimpse of what daylight is. And about once in so
often they need to swim there and look out at the daylight. If they
don't, they lose their eyesight from always being in the dark. He said
that a lot of Indians don't care whether they lose their eyesight or
not, so long's they can go on eating and swimming around. But good
Indians do. He said that as far as he could make out, none of the white
people care. He said maybe they've lost their eyes altogether."

Without a move of her sagging, unlovely old body, she turned her deep
black eyes on the flushed, quivering, beautiful woman beside her.
"That's where I go," she answered. "I go 'way off to be by myself, and
get a glimpse of what daylight is."

She got up to her feet, shifted her reticule from one hand to the other,
and without a backward look trudged slowly down the dusty road, a
stooped, shabby, feeble old figure.

Marise saw her turn into a wood-road that led up towards the mountain,
and disappear. Her own heart was burning as she looked. Nobody would
help her in her need. Toucle went away to find peace, and left her in
the black cave. Neale stood. . . .

A child's shriek of pain and loud wailing calls for "Mother! Mother!
_Mother!_" sent her back running breathlessly to the house. Mark had
fallen out of the swing and the sharp corner of the board had struck
him, he said, "in the eye! in the eye!" He was shrieki