She, little woman, sat in her rocking chair on the porch, looked up at the flood of sun and tried to find the world.
—Up the sun that is warm and good, up the sun that blinds me Struggling, not overwhelmed, I send my eyes....
She was clad in a pink dress whose dainty softness brought clear the silvery atunement of her body. There was naught slack in her. Her bare arms were a gentling, a subtle rounding of her bones: a haze of dark hair on them: hands rose intact and long from the fine wrists like flower from stem. The little breasts stood in the pink tulle, alert, infinitely one with the awareness of her eyes and wrists ... like the antennæ of a bug holding the world upon their frailty.
She sat challenging sun: not wilting: waiting her husband.
—Every day now he drinks. He gambles. He loves me. What have I to do with cards and liquor?
She, larger woman, sat deeper in her chair: lost now in a swathing gown of gray that rose like a wave to her white neck. Her shoulders and her chest; bare, were still planturous in their running variance of plane and mood: strong seeking chin, throat swelling as if with graceful words, chest rising downward from the aloof virginity of her neck to the slow fulness of her heavying breasts. Fanny was pregnant. She sat there ... taut limpid body ... in the sun, eyes unwilted, about her child like a sunny song hiding an omen. She sat there gradually giving way ... her taut and limpid sun-shape giving way ... to the dark press of a swollen larva tangled inside her blood, pressing, kicking, sucking weight to rend.
Harry Luve was gone three days, without a word ... plenty of signs. She knew.
—He has gone. I shall see him again. O yes. Long after I have looked in my child’s eyes. Thank God for that! I shall look long, years perhaps? long and deep in my baby’s eyes in order to understand how I must see him again.
His going down was simple like all of Harry Luve ... simple like a very plaintive song. She sat between the high sun and the low wail of her husband: balanced about a child.