The two faced each other, her eyes large, enquiring, quietly hostile. Stafford, moving with steadiness upon that changed level, met her gaze with a gaze she could not read. She turned slightly, sank into a great chair, and motioned him to one opposite. He continued to stand, his hand touching the table. There was a bowl of roses on the table, and soft lights and shadows filled the room.
“Mrs. Cleave, will you tell me where I may find him?”
“No. You must understand that I cannot do that.... We heard that you were in prison.”
“I have been in prison since Sharpsburg. Latterly I found a friend and four days ago I was exchanged. I have come straight to Three Oaks.”
“Yes? Why?”
Stafford walked the length of the room and stood a moment at a window, looking out into the night. He had fought his fight; it was all over and done with. Those last weeks in prison he had known where the victory would fall, and that first night out his mind had parted as finally as was possible with one vast country of his past, a dark country of strain and longing, fierce attraction, fierce repulsion. On the starlit road from Prison X, in the quietude of the earth, victory profound and ultimate had come, soft as down. Before he gathered the berries in the by-road, before the soldiers took him, before Marchmont came, he had touched the larger country.
He came back to the table where Margaret sat, a rose in her hand, her eyes upon its petals.
“I came to Three Oaks,” he said, “to make retribution.”
“Retribution!”
Stafford faced her. “Mrs. Cleave, what do you know—what has he told you—of White Oak Swamp?”