He’d never looked at a girl since Floss—never meant to. Taken it out in writing poetry instead. Sometimes, for a few moments, doing that almost replaced her caresses, seemed to bring her as close as if words were warm and palpable like flesh. Then that illusion passed, and he was out again in the desert. … Once in a while, by way of experiment, he would give himself a kind of mental pinch where the ache had been, just to be sure he felt nothing—literally nothing. But when the trees by the river budded, and the buds were black against a yellow sky, the ache would spring back and catch him in the heart as you see lumbago suddenly catch a man between the shoulders. For a long time he stood gazing across the field and remembering how he used to go and hide down by the river, and spy out through the bushes for Floss. Or, oftener, she’d be there first, and her strong young arms would pull him down to her. … There was no danger now in remembering these things. She had left Euphoria; he had heard she had a job in a department store at Dakin, on the other side of Chicago. He suspected his father of having managed that. … The scene of their brief passion was deserted, and for him it would always remain so. That was life, he supposed. His bitterness gradually passed; he remembered her kisses and forgave her. Leaning on the fence, he pulled out a cigarette and thought big manly thoughts about her, and about Woman in general.
“Well,” he interrupted himself suddenly, “I don’t suppose you expected to be the only fellow to meet a girl down under those bushes, did you, Vance Weston?” The remark was provoked by the sight of a man sauntering across lots to the edge of the maple grove. Even at that distance he had the air of someone who would as soon not be seen, but is doing all he can not to betray the fact. The sight instantly altered Vance’s mood, and he continued to lean on the fence, puffing ironically at his cigarette and whistling a vaudeville tune. The light was growing faint, the man was almost too far away to be recognized; but as he approached, Vance saw a tall spare figure moving with the jauntiness of an elderly man trying to look young who is jerked back at every step by his stiff joints. The gait was familiar; so, as the figure drew still nearer, was the frock coat flung open from a crumpled waistcoat, and the sombrero brim of the felt hat. Presently he lifted the hat and wiped his forehead; and the last slant of sunset lit up his swarthy face, the dominant nose and weak handsome mouth, and the white-and-black mane tossed back from his forehead. Vance, amused and vaguely curious, stood staring at the apparition of his grandfather.
You never could tell about Grandpa—they all knew it in the family, and put up with the fact as you put up with the weather. Still, to come on him here, slinking along on the edge of the grove, and mopping his forehead as if he had been running to catch the trolley; well, it was funny. Something at once dashing and furtive about his air made Vance remember an occasion when, as a small boy, he had gone Christmas shopping with his mother, and they had run into Grandpa, mopping his forehead in the same way, and hurrying toward them round the corner of a certain street that Vance and his schoolmates were always forbidden to play in. The little boy had instantly guessed that something was wrong when his mother, instead of exclaiming: “Why, there’s Grandpa!” had abruptly remembered that, good gracious, she’d never ordered the yeast from Sproul’s Bakery, and had jerked Vance back there without seeming to notice Mr. Scrimser. Such subterfuges are signposts on the road to enlightenment.
Vance continued to smile sardonically at the remembrance of this episode, and the thought of how far behind him his guileless infancy lay. For a moment he felt inclined to hail his grandfather; then something about the old man’s air and movements made him decide to turn away. “Guess it’s about time to step round to Sproul’s for the yeast,” he chuckled to himself; but as he averted his glance it was arrested by the approach of another figure. The light was failing fast and Vance was a good hundred yards from the river; but in the thickest dusk, and at a greater distance, he would have known the quick movements, the light outline, of the girl slipping through the trees toward Mr. Scrimser. … “But she isn’t here … she isn’t here … I know she isn’t!” stormed through the boy in a rush of useless denial. He stood rooted to the earth while everything she had ever been to him, every look and intonation, every scent and breath and touch that had bound him to her, and made them one, flooded over him in fiery remembrance. He had never been able to imagine what excruciating physical pain was like, the kind you felt when you were smashed under a train, or torn by a whirling engine in a factory—but
