Over the farmhouse on such nights dense silence brooded and she and Hugh,
as had become their habit together, were silent. In the darkness she put up
her hand to touch her husband's face and hair. He lay still and she had the
impression of some great force holding him back, holding her back. A sharp
sense of struggle filled the room. The air was heavy with it.

When words came they did not break the silence. The wall remained.

The words that came were empty, meaningless words. Hugh suddenly broke
forth into speech. He spoke of his work at the shop and of his progress
toward the solution of some difficult, mechanical problem. If it were
evening when the thing happened the two people got out of the lighted house
where they had been sitting together, each feeling darkness would help the
effort they were both making to tear away the wall. They walked along a
lane, past the barns and over the little wooden bridge across the stream
that ran down through the barnyard. Hugh did not want to talk of the work
at the shop, but could find words for no other talk. They came to a fence
where the lane turned and from where they could look down the hillside and
into the town. He did not look at Clara but stared down the hillside and
the words, in regard to the mechanical difficulties that had occupied his
mind all day, ran on and on. When later they went back to the house he felt
a little relieved. "I've said words. There is something achieved," he
thought.

* * * * *

And now after the three years as a married woman Clara sat in the motor
with her father and husband and with them was sent whirling swiftly through
the summer night. The car ran down the hill road from the Butterworth farm,