"There, the train is coming," she said.
"Plenty—plenty of time."
"No. Mrs. Goodwin is calling me. Good-bye," she said, still suffering him to hold her hand. "Are you always going to be a wild man?"
"You remember what they used to call me."
"Yes, that bad name. But I must go."
She ran away from him. He strode back across the field. He heard the train when it stopped and when it started again, but did not look round. He stood in the ditch where he had helped her across. There was the print of her foot in the moist earth. He heard the crickets crying in the deep grass. He lay down for a moment, and felt that the cry of his heart drowned all sounds of earth. "If it were only different," he said to himself, over and over again. "When she knows, what will she think? Must she know? Perhaps not—I hope not. When it is all over, I will kill it in my own breast." He was conscious of the theatrical. He was on the stage. Glow-worms were his footlights; his orchestra was deep-hidden in the grass. "Why can't a man be genuine?" he asked himself. "Why does a heart put on, talk to itself, and strut?"
In the road he met Mrs. Blakemore walking with Bobbie. The boy had a long stick, pushing it on the ground in front of himself. He called it his plow. His mother cautioned him. He might hurt himself. The stick struck a lump in the road and punched him. He howled just as Milford came up.
"I told you not to shove that stick. And now you've nearly ruined yourself. Here's Mr. Milford. Perhaps he will carry you."
Milford took the boy on his back. "You are my horse," said the boy, whimpering. They turned toward the house, Mrs. Blakemore striving to keep step with Milford. "Don't go so fast. I can't keep step with you," she said.
"Get up," the boy commanded.