esty on the bed; "there was a good bit I didn't get
the hang of. It seems like I hadn't learned anything
at all from being alive. I'm going to fix it
up," he proceeded, painfully earnest. "I'm--"
He broke off suddenly at the stabbing memory of
the doctor's words, "She wanted to die a thousand
times." He thought, I've killed her a thousand
times already. The fear plucked at his throat. He
rose and walked unsteadily to the door and out upon
the porch.

The evening drew its gauze over the valley, the
shrill, tenuous chorus of insects had begun for the
night, the gold caps were dissolving from the eastern
peaks. He saw Simeon Caley at the stable door;
Sim avoided him, moving behind a corner of the
shed. His pending sense of blood-guiltiness deepened.
The impulse returned to flee, to vanish in the
engulfing wild of the mountains. But he realized
vaguely that that from which he longed to escape
lay within him, he would carry it -- the memories
woven inexplicably of past and present, dominated
by this last, unforgettable specter on the bed -- into
the woods, the high, lonely clearings, the still valleys.
It was not remorse now, it was not simple fear, but
the old oppression, increased a thousand-fold.

He sat in the low rocking chair that had held
his mother and Clare, and, only yesterday, Lettice,
and its rockers made their familiar tracking sound

[[273]]

p272 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p273w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p274

v?