There, in the broad light of the setting sun, Pete rhythmically bent and straightened over his saw. The tool sang with a hissing, ringing rhythm, and the young man drove it with a lithe, long swing of body, forward and back, forward and back, in alternate postures of untiring grace. The air was not cold. There was the cloudy softness premonitory of a spring storm; the sun glowed like a dying fire through a long, narrow rift in the shrouded west. Pete had thrown aside his coat and drawn in his belt. The collar of his flannel shirt was open and turned back; his head was bare. The bright gold of his short hair, the scarlet of his cheeks, the vivid blue of his brooding eyes, made shocks of color against the prevailing whiteness. Even the indigo of his overalls and the dark gray of his shirt stood out with a curious value of tint and texture. His bare hands and forearms glowed. He was whistling with a boy’s vigor and a bird’s sweetness.
Bella caught Pete’s arm as it bent for one of the strong forward sweeps. He stopped, let go of his saw, and turned to her, smiling.
Her eyes flamed in her pale, tense face. “We’ve got to stop it, Pete,” she said. “It’s horrible!”
“What? Don’t stand out here with those bare arms, Bella.” He was pulling his own shirt-sleeves down over his glistening bronze forearms as he spoke.
“We can’t talk in the house,” she said, “and I’ve got to talk. I--Do you know what Hugh’s doing--what he’s telling that girl? What he’s letting her believe?”
Pete shook his head, but at the same time turned his blue eyes away from her toward the glowing west.
“Lies,” said Bella. She laughed a short, explosive laugh. “He’s got his ideal audience at last--a blind one. She thinks he’s young and handsome and heroic. Pete, she thinks he’s a hero. She thinks he’s buried himself out here for the sake of somebody else. Oh, it’s a regular romance, and it’s been going on for hours--it’s still going on. By now he believes it all himself. He’s putting in the details. And Sylvie: ‘Oh!’ she’s saying, and ‘Ah, Mr. Garth, how you must have suffered! How wonderful you are!’ And--look at me Pete--do you want to know what we are--according to him--you and I?”
He did not turn his eyes from the west, even when she shook his arm.
