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Had she ever married? No, come to think of it, she never had

He walked out to the cemetery in the afternoon and found her stone, which said, “Ann Taylor, born 1910, died 1936” And he thought, Twenty-six years old Why, I’m four years older than you are now, Miss Taylor

Later in the day the people in the to Bob Markha to meet him and they all turned to watch her pass, for her face shifted with bright shadows as she walked She was the fine peaches of summer in the snointer, and she was coolAnd this was one of those rare few days in time when the climate was balanced like a ht, one of those days that should have been nareed, after Bob Markham’s wife

AT MIDNIGHT, IN THE MONTH OF JUNE

HE HAD BEEN waiting a long, long tiht, as the darkness pressed warmer to the earth and the stars turned slowly over the sky He sat in total darkness, his hands lying easily on the arms of the Morris chair He heard the town clock strike 9 and 10 and 11, and then at last 12 The breeze froht house in an unlit stream, that touched hi the front door—silently watching

At ht, in the month of June

The cool night poear Allan Poe slid over his mind like the waters of a shadowed creek

The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,

Which is enduring, so be deep!

He moved down the black shapeless halls of the house, stepped out of the back , feeling the town locked away in bed, in dreaarden hose coiled resiliently in the grass He turned on the water Standing alone, watering the flower bed, he iht-strolling dogs e white sht into thedeep, well-outlined prints He stepped inside again and walked, leavingfor him

Through the front-porchhe lass, one-third full, sitting on the porch rail where she had left it He trembled quietly

Now, he could feel her co across town, far away, in the suht He shut his eyes and put hisin the dark; he knew just where she stepped down from a curb and crossed a street, and up on a curb and tack-tacking, tack-tacking along under the June el the eht, he was she He felt a purse in his hands He felt long hair prickle his neck, and his , walking, walking on hoht

“Good night!”

He heard but did not hear the voices, and she was co nearer, and now she was only a mile away and now only a , like a beautiful white lantern on an invisible wire, down into the cricket and frog and water-sounding ravine And he knew the texture of the wooden ravine stairs as if, a boy, he was rushing down therain and the dust and the leftover heat of the day

He put his hands out on the air, open The thuers, so that his handsemptiness, there before hihter together, his mouth open, his eyes shut