the need of breath in a close place.

With a laugh as soft and sure as her own Hugh took Clara into his arms.
A few minutes later they went up stairs and twice Hugh stumbled on the
stairway. It did not matter. His long awkward body was a thing outside
himself. It might stumble and fall many times but the new thing he had
found, the thing inside himself that responded to the thing inside the
shell that was Clara his wife, did not stumble. It flew like a bird out of
darkness into the light. At the moment he thought the sweeping flight of
life thus begun would run on forever.




BOOK SIX




CHAPTER XXI


It was a summer night in Ohio and the wheat in the long, flat fields that
stretched away to the north from the town of Bidwell was ripe for the
cutting. Between the wheat fields lay corn and cabbage fields. In the corn
fields the green stalks stood up like young trees. Facing the fields lay
the white roads, once the silent roads, hushed and empty through the nights
and often during many hours of the day, the night silence broken only at
long intervals by the clattering hoofs of homeward bound horses and the
silence of days by creaking wagons. Along the roads on a summer evening