ΤWO locks of red hair falling upon her forehead like red shadows, Alwyn's aunt Flora, when she sang, bent her head timidly or looked straight up toward the ceiling as if it were a sky—and a sky full of beings which other people could not see. The sound of her voice rose and fell, often strained by emotions for which her thin throat was too slender a channel, often failing altogether when its sweetness made her sad.
Alwyn thought that she was beautiful like an idol, vaguely thinking of the bright-colored statues in Catholic churches as idols: her good-natured, dismayed face; her hair like rusted iron in a burdensome crown, broken into large curls at the nape of her neck; her hands blue-white, with perfectly twisted veins. To amuse him when he was a child, she drew sails upon little round lakes, rigid fountains, butterflies, and nose-gays of forget-me-nots, coloring them from a water-color box. When an adolescent, he always stood as near her as he dared, charmed by the perfume of attar-of-roses which drifted from her dress, the odor of orris root in her hair, and the atmosphere, like a delicate scent itself, of the life of a girl nearly thirty years old, gradually losing the freshness of girlhood without growing old, almost without growing older.
He knew that his company gave her pleasure as well; even with her brothers, his uncles, she was less at ease. Perhaps his love was the only love she had received which did not threaten to make itself felt with startling energy, threaten to possess and coerce her—and then fail to do so. They were of the same blood, which meant, she thought, that they shared moral principles and a religious faith; he was a mere child and her nephew. So their relationship afforded her a holiday from having to choose between one man and another, from the alarms and embarrassments of being an unmarried woman.
For two men had troubled five years of her life, less with emotions than with what she called "problems." The first had been Richard Wallace, the son of a wealthy farmer, a grown-up adolescent, wise in the policies and graces of his age; not clever, but with pride to take the place of vivacity. He had bright gray eyes, and drove the most violent and shining horses in the country. He had tired of many girls who loved him. Olive Templeton, a girl named Valentine, and Flora's cousin Edith, if they happened to be where he was, followed him with angry, intimate glances without ever speaking. Their grievances were only those of wounded vanity, for he had never profited by their self-abandonment. He had had a rendezvous almost every night for a number of years, and waited impatiently for nightfall as if it were a ceremony and a feast; but by day he had the look of a victim of his own love-making and his self-control.
Flora was pleased when her turn came to be the object of his fickle attentions. Her life as a woman would begin with an encouraging conquest, for, with perfect confidence in herself, she intended to be the first to enjoy his wooing and resist his charm. Dreaming vaguely of more serious love, she became his favorite, half conscious of her bravado and her disdain. of him and of what he was doing; the disdain was ignorant as well as innocent.
She soon lost her ignorance; a great many serious new sensations made her humble. Each fought, against the other's magic, to keep his will power and above all his will to be good, intact; and a closer companionship developed in their common fear of companionship's magic. In solitude, in a buggy, behind excited mares which jerked the reins, there was his shoulder against her shoulder; his arm stealing behind her and patiently put away; the scent of his wiry hair and his tobacco; the hard pressure of his knees under the lap robe. Picnics and parties were only a truce; and after, once more, his breath on her cheek in the starlight.
His love whispering was meaningless but terribly comprehensible: never all of a sentence, often not all of a word. . . . He did not ask for privileges or favors, as if he neither wanted her to know his intentions nor wanted to know them himself; but continued to reach out his hand obstinately, dreamily: desire fast asleep, in a sleep of self-control. He rarely spoke of marriage. Flora could not believe that he loved her. Because of her vigilance to protect herself from seduction, she could not study her heart to learn whether or not she loved him.