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and meditated well upon it.
                "Only tell me the name of the father," her young husband said to Annie-Belle.
                "Better you don't know it," she said. Then she lied: "He's gone, now; gone out west."
                "Was it --?" naming one or two.
                "You never knew him. He came by the ranch on his way out west."
                Then she burst out crying again, and he took her in his arms.
                "It will be all over town," said the mother-in-law. "That girl made a fool of you!"
                She slammed the dishes on the table and would have made the girl eat out the back door, but the young husband laid her a place at table with his own hand and led her in and sat her down in spite of his mother's black looks. They bowed their heads for grace. Surely, the Minister thought, seeing his boy cut bread for Annie-Belle and lay it on her plate, my son is a saint. He began to fear for him.
                "I won't do anything unless you want," her husband said in the dark after the candle went out.
                The straw with which the mattress was stuffed rustled beneath her as she turned away from him.
     
                                    INTERIOR. FARMHOUSE KITCHEN. NIGHT
                                    Johnny comes in from outside, looks at father asleep in rocking-chair.
                                    Picks up some discarded garment of Annie-Belle's from the back of a chair, buries face in it.
                                    Shoulders shake.
                                    Opens cupboard, takes out bottle.
                                    Uncorks with teeth. Drinks.
                                    Bottle in hand, goes out on porch.
     
                                    EXTERIOR. PRAIRIE. NIGHT
                                    (Johnny's point of view) Moon rising over prairie: the vast, the elegiac plain. "Landscape Theme" rises.
     
                                    INTERIOR. MINISTER'S SON'S ROOM. NIGHT
                                    Annie-Belle and Minister's son in bed.
                                    Moonlight through the curtains.
                                    Both lie there, open-eyed. Rustle of mattress.
     
                                    ANNIE-BELLE: You awake?
     
                                    Minister's son moves away from her.
     
                                    ANNIE-BELLE: Reckon I never properly knowed no young man before. . .
     
                                    MINISTER'S SON: What about --
     
                                    ANNIE-BELLE (shrugging the question off): Oh. . .
     
                                    Minister's son moves towards her.
     
                For she did not consider her brother in this new category of "young men"; he was herself. So she and her husband slept in one another's arms, that night, although they did nothing else for she was scared it might harm the baby and he was so full of pain and glory it was scarcely to be borne, it was already enough, or too much, holding her tight, in his terrible innocence.
                It was not so much that she was pliant. Only, fearing the worst, it turned out that the worst had already happened; her sin found her out, or, rather, she found out she had sinned only when he offered his forgiveness, and, from her