IV-IV

The next afternoon I walked over to the
Shimerdas'. Yulka showed me the baby and
told me that Antonia was shocking wheat on
the southwest quarter. I went down across
the fields, and Tony saw me from a long way
off. She stood still by her shocks, leaning on
her pitchfork, watching me as I came. We
met like the people in the old song, in silence,
if not in tears. Her warm hand clasped mine.

"I thought you'd come, Jim. I heard you
were at Mrs. Steavens's last night. I've been
looking for you all day."

She was thinner than I had ever seen her,
and looked, as Mrs. Steavens said, "worked
down," but there was a new kind of strength
in the gravity of her face, and her color still
gave her that look of deep-seated health and
ardor. Still? Why, it flashed across me that
though so much had happened in her life and
in mine, she was barely twenty-four years
old.

Antonia stuck her fork in the ground,
and instinctively we walked toward that un-

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p360 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p361w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p362

v?