It ain’t close, neither.
Just where I can hear her at need.
And I fixed a bolt on the door.
Any of them can come out, at any time, and see me in the tent.”
“Ah, Byron, Byron.”
“I know you ain’t thinking what most of them think.
Are thinking.
I know you would know better, even if she wasn’t—if it wasn’t for—I know you said that because of what you know that the others will think.”
Hightower sits again in the attitude of the eastern idol, between his parallel arms on the armrests of the chair.
“Go away, Byron.
Go away.
Now.
At once.
Leave this place forever, this terrible place, this terrible, terrible place.
I can read you.
You will tell me that you have just learned love; I will tell you that you have just learned hope.
That’s all; hope.
The object does not matter, not to the hope, not even to you.
There is but one end to this, to the road that you are taking: sin or marriage.
And you would refuse the sin.
That’s it, God forgive me.
It will, must be, marriage or nothing with you.
And you will insist that it be marriage.
You will convince her; perhaps you already have, if she but knew it, would admit it: else, why is she content to stay here and yet make no effort to see the man whom she has come to find?
I cannot say to you, Choose the sin, because you would not only hate me: you would carry that hatred straight to her.
So I say, Go away.
Now.
At once.
Turn your face now, and don’t look back.
But not this, Byron.”
They look at one another.
“I knew you would not like it,” Byron says. “I reckon I done right not to make myself a guest by sitting down.
But I did not expect this.
That you too would turn against a woman wronged and betrayed—”
“No woman who has a child is ever betrayed; the husband of a mother, whether he be the father or not, is already a cuckold.
Give yourself at least the one chance in ten, Byron.
If you must marry, there are single women, girls, virgins.
It’s not fair that you should sacrifice yourself to a woman who has chosen once and now wishes to renege that choice.
It’s not right.
It’s not just.
God didn’t intend it so when He made marriage.
Made it?
Women made marriage.”
“Sacrifice?
Me the sacrifice?
It seems to me the sacrifice—”
Not to her.
For the Lena Groves there are always two men in the world and their number is legion: Lucas Burches and Byron Bunches.
But no Lena, no woman, deserves more than one of them.
No woman.