"Why, Hannah," he said impotently--"Hannah--" His vision blurred so
that he couldn't see her clearly; it was as if, indistinct before him,
she were already fading from his life. "I never went to hurt you," he
continued in a curious detachment from his suffering. "You were
everything I had."
Calvin grew awkward, confused in his mind and gestures. At the same
time Hannah's desirability increased immeasurably. Never in Greenstream
or any place else had he seen another like her; and he was about to
lose her, lose Hannah.
Automatically he repeated, "If Phebe were a man----"
He was powerless not only against exterior circumstance but to combat
what lay with Hannah. Phebe would never set her hands in hot dishwater.
He recalled their mother, fretful and impatient. He shook his head as
if to free his mind from so many vain thoughts. She stood, hard and
unrelenting.
He tried to mutter a phrase about being here if she should return, but
it perished in the conviction of its uselessness. Calvin saw her with
green-yellow hair, a cigarette in painted lips; he heard the blurred
applause of men at the spectacle of Hannah on the stage, dressed like
the women he had seen there. Then pride stiffened him into a semblance
of her own remoteness.
"It's in you," he said; "and it will have to come out. I'm what I am
too, and that doesn't make it any easier. Kind of a fool about you.
Another girl won't do. I'll say good night."
He turned and abruptly quitted the room and all his hope.
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