Free This Proud Heart by Pearl S. Buck Page A

brightness will be gone. And besides I shall be very small, in front.”
    He had drawn the mass of the wood, dark against the bright sky.
    “It’s good,” she said, “it’s really very good.”
    He accepted the praise without answer, and went over to the head.
    He asked, “Is that me?”
    “It will be,” she said. “Do you like it?”
    He shook his head. “It looks mucky. But I don’t know how I look. I want to go now. I’ll come back tomorrow and finish the horse.”
    “I’ll expect you,” she said. He was gone. She caught one more flashing line of profile and pressed it firmly into the clay. Then she wiped her hands and went to the window. He had mounted his horse and was riding away. She looked at his drawing again. It was surprising how well he had caught the shadows of the wood against the evening sky.
    It was hard to say to Mark, brightly, as she had planned, “Mark, I’ve made some money today.” Any other woman she knew would have shouted it to her husband. Lucile, winning two dollars at bridge, always boasted, “Hal will be tickled pink—I’ve won nearly twelve dollars this month—almost enough to pay for the girl who comes in to stay with the brats while I’m away.” But she had made too much, too easily. Mark would ask, “How much is it?” And then when she told him, the dark dead look she dreaded would come into his eyes and he would say, “It’s more than I can make in three months—maybe, four.” She was ashamed to be able to do more than he could do. She could not bear to abase him. And there was that thing beyond money which she could not tell him because she did not know how, that desire, the strongest she knew, that need, that solitary fulfillment which separated her from him, she did not understand how, except that then she was alone and wanted to be alone, because she needed no one, not even him. She could not tell him that. She could tell him about the money but not about that.
    In the kitchen, moving swiftly from stove to table to closet, she prepared the dinner that would please him. But it occupied only a part of her brain, it was only play for her hands. Even her hands were not working as they worked when she was modeling. Above the small business of chicken pie made from yesterday’s cold chicken, above an aspic salad and a dessert her mind went on pondering, reasoning. It was no good refusing any more to face the sort of woman she was and the sort of woman she wanted to be for Mark. Mark must be happy first, but how could she keep him happy, being what she was? There were the brackets he had made, “(Susan’s limit).”
    She stared out into the sky above the wood outside the kitchen window. The sunset was gone, but the sky was glowing dark, and there hung the evening star, enormous in its nearness. It hung there, large, still, solitary and full of meaning. She suddenly felt quite alone with herself and yet she was not lonely. She looked about the kitchen and it was strange to her for a moment—a transient place, as though any day she might go out of it. She pulled it about her quickly.
    “I must tell Mark everything,” she decided quickly. “Mark must know everything about me. It’s the only safety.” Then she thought, “But why is it I don’t feel safe?” She drew down the shade sharply and shut out the one star and the sky. She shut herself into the kitchen. And then Mark at the door said, “Do I smell something burning or not?”
    And she ran to the stove and drew out the pie. One edge was crisping brown.
    “You came just in time,” she cried. “Oh, Mark!” She put down the pie and ran into his arms.
    He was so kind and so good. Why had she thought it would be hard to tell him?
    “Promise—promise you won’t be hurt if I tell you something,” she begged him after dinner. It was almost too cold now to sit on the porch in the darkness, but he had wrapped his old tweed coat about her, and pulled a sweater over his head. “The stars are all out