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if she were thrust into an execution chamber filled with scalding steam. The

heat did not come from the sun, but from that broken cut in the earth, from the

reflectors of flat ridges. Her shoulders, her head, her back, exposed to the

sky, seemed cool while she felt the hot breath of the stone rising up her legs,

to her chin, to her nostrils. The air shimmered below, sparks of fire shot

through the granite; she thought the stone was stirring, melting, running in

white trickles of lava. Drills and hammers cracked the still weight of the air.

It was obscene to see men on the shelves of the furnace. They did not look like

workers, they looked like a chain gang serving an unspeakable penance for some

unspeakable crime. She could not turn away.

She stood, as an insult to the place below. Her dress--the color of water, a

pale green-blue, too simple and expensive, its pleats exact like edges of

glass--her thin heels planted wide apart on the boulders, the smooth helmet of

her hair, the exaggerated fragility of her body against the sky--flaunted the

fastidious coolness of the gardens and drawing rooms from which she came.

She looked down. Her eyes stopped on the orange hair of a man who raised his

head and looked at her.

She stood very still, because her first perception was not of sight, but of

touch: the consciousness, not of a visual presence, but of a slap in the face.

She held one hand awkwardly away from her body, the fingers spread wide on the

air, as against a wall. She knew that she could not move until he permitted her

to.

She saw his mouth and the silent contempt in the shape of his mouth; the planes

of his gaunt, hollow cheeks; the cold, pure brilliance of the eyes that had no

trace of pity. She knew it was the most beautiful face she would ever see,

because it was the abstraction of strength made visible. She felt a convulsion

of anger, of protest, of resistance--and of pleasure. He stood looking up at

her; it was not a glance, but an act of ownership. She thought she must let her

face give him the answer he deserved. But she was looking, instead, at the stone

dust on his burned arms, the wet shirt clinging to his ribs, the lines of his

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long legs. She was thinking of those statues of men she had always sought; she

was wondering what he would look like naked. She saw him looking at her as if he

knew that. She thought she had found an aim in life--a sudden, sweeping hatred

for that man.

She was first to move. She turned and walked away from him. She saw the

superintendent of the quarry on the path ahead, and she waved. The

superintendent rushed forward to meet her. "Why, Miss Francon!" he cried. "Why,

how do you do, Miss Francon!"

She hoped the words were heard by the man below. For the first time in her life,

she was glad of being Miss Francon, glad of her father’s position and

possessions, which she had always despised. She thought suddenly that the man

below was only a common worker, owned by the owner of this place, and she was

almost the owner of this place.

The superintendent stood before her respectfully. She smiled and said:

"I suppose I’ll inherit the quarry some day, so I thought I should show some

interest in it once in a while."

The superintendent preceded her down the path, displayed his domain to her,

explained the work. She followed him far to the other side of the quarry; she

descended to the dusty green dell of the work sheds; she inspected the

bewildering machinery. She allowed a convincingly sufficient time to elapse.

Then she walked back, alone, down the edge of the granite bowl.

She saw him from a distance as she approached. He was working. She saw one

strand of red hair that fell over his face and swayed with the trembling of the

drill. She thought--hopefully--that the vibrations of the drill hurt him, hurt

his body, everything inside his body.

When she was on the rocks above him, he raised his head and looked at her; she

had not caught him noticing her approach; he looked up as if he expected her to

be there, as if he knew she would be back. She saw the hint of a smile, more

insulting than words. He sustained the insolence of looking straight at her, he

would not move, he would not grant the concession of turning away--of

acknowledging that he had no right to look at her in such manner. He had not

merely taken that right, he was saying silently that she had given it to him.

She turned sharply and walked on, down the rocky slope, away from the quarry.

#

It was not his eyes, not his mouth that she remembered, but his hands. The

meaning of that day seemed held in a single picture she had noted: the simple

instant of his one hand resting against granite. She saw it again: his

fingertips pressed to the stone, his long fingers continuing the straight lines

of the tendons that spread in a fan from his wrist to his knuckles. She thought

of him, but the vision present through all her thoughts was the picture of that

hand on the granite. It frightened her; she could not understand it.

He’s only a common worker, she thought, a hired man doing a convict’s labor. She

thought of that, sitting before the glass shelf of her dressing table. She

looked at the crystal objects spread before her; they were like sculptures in

ice--they proclaimed her own cold, luxurious fragility; and she thought of his

strained body, of his clothes drenched in dust and sweat, of his hands. She

stressed the contrast, because it degraded her. She leaned back, closing her

eyes. She thought of the many distinguished men whom she had refused. She

thought of the quarry worker. She thought of being broken--not by a man she

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admired, but by a man she loathed. She let her head fall down on her arm; the

thought left her weak with pleasure.

For two days she made herself believe that she would escape from this place; she

found old travel folders in her trunk, studied them, chose the resort, the hotel

and the particular room in that hotel, selected the train she would take, the

boat and the number of the stateroom. She found a vicious amusement in doing

that, because she knew she would not take this trip she wanted; she would go

back to the quarry.

She went back to the quarry three days later. She stopped over the ledge where

he worked and she stood watching him openly. When he raised his head, she did

not turn away. Her glance told him she knew the meaning of her action, but did

not respect him enough to conceal it. His glance told her only that he had

expected her to come. He bent over his drill and went on with his work. She

waited. She wanted him to look up. She knew that he knew it. He would not look

again.

She stood, watching his hands, waiting for the moments when he touched stone.

She forgot the drill and the dynamite. She liked to think of the granite being

broken by his hands.

She heard the superintendent calling her name, hurrying to her up the path. She

turned to him when he approached.

"I like to watch the men working," she explained.

"Yes, quite a picture, isn’t it?" the superintendent agreed. "There’s the train

starting over there with another load."

She was not watching the train. She saw the man below looking at her, she saw

the insolent hint of amusement tell her that he knew she did not want him to

look at her now. She turned her head away. The superintendent’s eyes traveled

over the pit and stopped on the man below them.

"Hey, you down there!" he shouted. "Are you paid to work or to gape?"

The man bent silently over his drill. Dominique laughed aloud.

The superintendent said: "It’s a tough crew we got down here, Miss

Francon....Some of ’em even with jail records."

"Has that man a jail record?" she asked, pointing down.

"Well, I couldn’t say. Wouldn’t know them all by sight."

She hoped he had. She wondered whether they whipped convicts nowadays. She hoped

they did. At the thought of it, she felt a sinking gasp such as she had felt in

childhood, in dreams of falling down a long stairway; but she felt the sinking

in her stomach.

She turned brusquely and left the quarry.

She came back many days later. She saw him, unexpectedly, on a flat stretch of

stone before her, by the side of the path. She stopped short. She did not want

to come too close. It was strange to see him before her, without the defense and

excuse of distance.

He stood looking straight at her. Their understanding was too offensively

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intimate, because they had never said a word to each other. She destroyed it by

speaking to him.

"Why do you always stare at me?" she asked sharply.

She thought with relief that words were the best means of estrangement. She had

denied everything they both knew by naming it. For a moment, he stood silently,

looking at her. She felt terror at the thought that he would not answer, that he

would let his silence tell her too clearly why no answer was necessary. But he

answered. He said:

"For the same reason you’ve been staring at me."

"I don’t know what you’re talking about."

"If you didn’t, you’d be much more astonished and much less angry, Miss

Francon."

"So you know my name?"

"You’ve been advertising it loudly enough."

"You’d better not be insolent. I can have you fired at a moment’s notice, you

know."

He turned his head, looking for someone among the men below. He asked: "Shall I

call the superintendent?"

She smiled contemptuously.

"No, of course not. It would be too simple. But since you know who I am, it

would be better if you stopped looking at me when I come here. It might be

misunderstood."

"I don’t think so."

She turned away. She had to control her voice. She looked over the stone ledges.

She asked: "Do you find it very hard to work here?"

"Yes. Terribly."

"Do you get tired?"

"Inhumanly."

"How does that feel?"

"I can hardly walk when the day’s ended. I can’t move my arms at night. When I

lie in bed, I can count every muscle in my body to the number of separate,

different pains."

She knew suddenly that he was not telling her about himself; he was speaking of

her, he was saying the things she wanted to hear and telling her that he knew

why she wanted to hear these particular sentences.

She felt anger, a satisfying anger because it was cold and certain. She felt

also a desire to let her skin touch his; to let the length of her bare arm press

against the length of his; just that; the desire went no further.,

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She was asking calmly:

"You don’t belong here, do you? You don’t talk like a worker. What were you

before?"

"An electrician. A plumber. A plasterer. Many things."

"Why are you working here?"

"For the money you’re paying me, Miss Francon."

She shrugged. She turned and walked away from him up the path. She knew that he

was looking after her. She did not glance back. She continued on her way through

the quarry, and she left it as soon as she could, but she did not go back down

the path where she would have to see him again.

2.

DOMINIQUE awakened each morning to the prospect of a day made significant by the

existence of a goal to be reached: the goal of making it a day on which she

would not go to the quarry.

She had lost the freedom she loved. She knew that a continuous struggle against

the compulsion of a single desire was compulsion also, but it was the form she

preferred to accept. It was the only manner in which she could let him motivate

her life. She found a dark satisfaction in pain--because that pain came from

him.

She went to call on he distant neighbors, a wealthy, gracious family who had

bored her in New York; she had visited no one all summer. They were astonished

and delighted to see her. She sat among a group of distinguished people at the

edge of a swimming pool. She watched the air of fastidious elegance around her.

She watched the deference of these people’s manner when they spoke to her. She

glanced at her own reflection in the pool: she looked more delicately austere

than any among them.

And she thought, with a vicious thrill, of what these people would do if they

read her mind in this moment; if they knew that she was thinking of a man in a

quarry, thinking of his body with a sharp intimacy as one does not think of

another’s body but only of one’s own. She smiled; the cold purity of her face

prevented them from seeing the nature of that smile. She came back again to

visit these people--for the same of such thoughts in the presence of their

respect for her.

One evening, a guest offered to drive her back to her house. He was an eminent

young poet. He was pale and slender; he had a soft, sensitive mouth, and eyes

hurt by the whole universe. She had not noticed the wistful attention with which

he had watched her for a long time. As they drove through the twilight she saw

him leaning hesitantly closer to her. She heard his voice whispering the

pleading, incoherent things she had heard from many men. He stopped the car. She

felt his lips pressed to her shoulder.

She jerked away from him. She sat still for an instant, because she would have

to brush against him if she moved and she could not bear to touch him. Then she

flung the door open, she leaped out, she slammed the door behind her as if the

crash of sound could wipe him out of existence, and she ran blindly. She stopped

running after a while, and she walked on shivering, walked down the dark road

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until she saw the roof line of her own house.

She stopped, looking about her with her first coherent thought of astonishment.

Such incidents had happened to her often in the past; only then she had been

amused; she had felt no revulsion; she had felt nothing.

She walked slowly across the lawn, to the house. On the stairs to her room she