She was a woman of few words and she and Hugh had never
been alone together, but as Hugh sat by the window on fall evenings, she
lay awake in a room in the farmer's house, where she was boarding during
the school season, and thought of him. She thought that had Hugh remained a
telegraph operator at forty dollars a month something might have happened
between them. Then she had other thoughts, or rather, sensations that had
little to do with thoughts. The room in which she lay was very still and
a streak of moonlight came in through the window. In the barn back of the
farmhouse she could hear the cattle stirring about. A pig grunted and in
the stillness that followed she could hear the farmer, who lay in the
next room with his wife, snoring gently. Rose was not very strong and the
physical did not rule in her nature, but she was very lonely and thought
that, like the farmer's wife, she would like to have a man to lie with her.
Warmth crept over her body and her lips became dry so that she moistened
them with her tongue. Had you been able to creep unobserved into the room,
you might have thought her much like a kitten lying by a stove. She closed
her eyes and gave herself over to dreams. In her conscious mind she dreamed
of being the wife of the bachelor Hugh McVey, but deep within her there was
another dream, a dream having its basis in the memory of her one physical
contact with a man.
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