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The girl gave a little shiver, arose, walked over to her wavering mirror and stood for half a minute perusing her dark-circled eyes. At last she turned away with a shake of her head.

"Well—no matter how I look—"

Abner made a gesture of protest. "Don't say that, don't!" He got up from his chair, went over to her and put his arms about her. He led her back to the chair and drew her down on his lap, snuggling her face under his neck and leaning his cheek on her pale hair.

"Nessie, you know you are not," he protested in a whisper. "You know we love each other. It ain't wrong for us to love each other?"

She whispered sadly in his ear, "You know it is, Abner—we ain't married. . . ."

Abner became still again, holding the girl in his arms, silently agreeing with her. In the eyes of the village, therefore in his own eyes, a marriage ceremony was of far more importance in a bodily union than love. Love and passion, he felt, were dubious things at best; his own for Nessie had faded away as mysteriously as it had arisen. He had reached the centrifugal moment of his honeymoon. The girl in his arms no longer moved his senses, and this brought a feeling of finality as if he could never be attracted to her again. He was aware that one of her elbows was uncomfortably sharp against his side; that she weighed one hundred and thirty pounds; that the room was small and hot; that her cheeks were disagreeably damp from tears . . . he wished he were at the garage.

And this was the moment when the girl most needed him; when she felt friendless and hopeless with the hands of all the village turned against her. She wanted Abner to stay with her at this moment because she could feel his indifference and it terrified her. She was not sure he would come back, once she let him go. Neither felt for the other any mental or artistic sympathy; simply their physical needs; and now that Nessie had assuaged that in her lover, she had lost him.