complexities. In those early hours after the wreck, full of pain
as they were, there was nothing of the suspicion and distrust that
came later. Shorn of our gauds and baubles, we were primitive man
and woman, together: our world for the hour was the deserted
farm-house, the slope of wheat-field that led to the road, the
woodland lot, the pasture.

We breakfasted together across the homely table. Our cheerfulness,
at first sheer reaction, became less forced as we ate great slices
of bread from the granny oven back of the house, and drank hot
fluid that smelled like coffee and tasted like nothing that I have
ever swallowed. We found cream in stone jars, sunk deep in the
chill water of the spring house. And there were eggs, great
yellow-brown ones,--a basket of them.

So, like two children awakened from a nightmare, we chattered over
our food: we hunted mutual friends, we laughed together at my feeble
witticisms, but we put the horror behind us resolutely. After all,
it was the hat with the green ribbons that brought back the
strangeness of the situation.

All along I had had the impression that Alison West was deliberately
putting out of her mind something that obtruded now and then. It
brought with it a return of the puzzled expression that I had
surprised early in the day, before the wreck. I caught it once,
when, breakfast over, she was tightening the sling that held the
broken arm. I had prolonged the morning meal as much as I could,
but when the wooden clock with the pink roses on the dial pointed
to half after ten, and the mother with the duplicate youngsters had
not come back, Miss West made the move I had dreaded.