became a medium through which the odds and ends of plantation
gossip reached Betty's ears, held himself to silence; while
little Steve ceased to shift his weight from foot to foot, the
very dearth of speech fixed his attention.

The long French windows, their curtains drawn, stood open. All
day a hot September sun had beaten upon the earth, but with the
fall of twilight a soft wind had sprung up and the candles in
their sconces flared at its touch. It came out of wide solitudes
laden with the familiar night sounds. It gave Betty a sense of
vast unused spaces, of Belle Plain clinging on the edge of an
engulfing wilderness, of her own loneliness. She needed Charley
as much as he seemed to think he needed her. The life she had
been living had become suddenly impossible of continuance; that
it had ever been possible was because of Charley; she knew this
now as she had never known it before.

Her thoughts dealt with the past. In her one great grief, her
mother's death, it had been Charley who had sustained and
comforted her. She was conscious of a choking sense of gratitude
as she recalled his patient tenderness at that time, the sympathy
and understanding he had shown; it was something never to be
forgotten.

Unrest presently sent her from the house. She wandered down to
the terrace. Before her was the wide sweep of the swampy
fore-shore, and beyond just beginning to silver in the moonlight,
the bend of the river growing out of the black void. With her
eyes on the river and her hands clasped loosely she watched the
distant line of the Arkansas coast grow up against the sky; she