Felmer shook the gate fiercely. “I wish that you would listen to reason!”
“I do, to my own. I’m thinking of selling—”
“Not the place!” he broke in. I asked him, as a man and a neighbor, if he thought that any sane tenant would invest in a left-over colonial, with roof leaking, paint off, shutters hanging; populated by generations of bats, and with a frog pond beside which Poe’s Raven was a pæan of joy?
“A place with no remaining virtue—”
“Except beauty,” he added. I clung to the gate’s bars, my brow upon my hands, and pain shaking my heart.
“And I’m a fool about it!” I said, miserably. “Every mossy old flagstone, and the very wizardry of its black woods against the sky, means me. It is psychic with inherited memories.”
“Miss E-enid! Are your shoes dry?” screamed Martha from the back door.
“To sell?” prodded Prince, relentlessly.
“The ivory Buddha and the Mercury, at the Collectors’ International Exposition opened up in town. Now is my chance.” He nodded.
“But be wary, Enid. You women—”