Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories

n garden. When the family had dined he came out to walk in the paths with the two children, boys, but they soon tired of his silence and went to join their mother. The young n

up through his fingers

long time he sat thus motionless, like a carved figure placed on the garden bench. He rested. He lived and did not live. The intense body, usuall

disturbed. Now he wanted to rest. The details of his life were forgotten. As for the woman he did not think of her, did not want to think of her. It was ridiculous that he needed her so much. He wondered if he had ever felt t

-far away. Keep yourself far away." The words trailed through his mind as the smoke from the cigarette trailed slowly upwards through his fingers. Di

n!" A maid came from the house and took the children away. They went along the path toward the house protesting. Then they ran back to kiss their mother. There was a struggle and then acceptance. The kiss was acceptanc

be like the voice within himself that whispered sometimes when he was quiet, relaxed. One evening when he had been with the woman, Rosalind, when he had taken her into the country in his car, he had suddenly felt as he did now. They sat together in the car that he had run into a field. For a long time they had remained silen

h the tree toad hidden away in the fork of a tree somewhere. He would lift his voice up from the earth, up i

e sound of her voice took away the desire to sing. Wh

also to be a dancer. That would have been sweetest of all things-to sway like the tops of young trees when a wind blew, to give himself as grey weeds in a sunburned field gave themself to the influence of passing shadows, changing color cons

and gardens had come, but his wife had forgotten fruitfulness. She was making plans for another year. She came along the garden path followed by the negro. "We will set out strawberry plants t

fe Cora had gone into the house and to bed. They bound him to life, to his

their bodies. They play about," he thought. It seemed to him that children, born of his fancy, were at that very moment playing about the bench where he sat. Living things t

saying she might be gone for several days. Between himself and Rosalind the conventional relationship of employer and employee had lon

eople had wanted to be lovers and he had fought against that. They had talked about it. "We

ationship. "If she were here now, in this garden with me, it wouldn't matt

s against the foliage of a low growing bush. His wife wore a white dress. He could see her figure quite plainly. In the uncertain light it looked girlish and young. She put her hand up and took

hing of that but Walter Sayers knew that was the object of her visit to the Iowa town. It w

part from Walter Sayers

n. Only the children of

g thing. It advanced

little brother of

hen he answered her comments on the future of the garden was soft and low. There

d listened to the voices of people, to the voices that filled the air of America, rang through the houses of

t from his own people,

d wanted to be a lawye

a n

of the woman was found and then he was found walking in the street. Mrs. Sayers' brother, a lawyer, had saved him from being punished as a murderer and after the trial, and the young negro's acquittal, had induced his sister to take him as

went away along the path that led to the kitchen door. He had a room in a little house at the foot of the garden. In the room he had books

e stopped by the tree where a moment before the white woman had stood talking to him. He put his hand on the trun

e away from his black people, from the warm brown girls with the golden colors playing through the blue black of their skins and had worked his way through a Northern college, had ac

to go off the Sayers' place. Education, books had done something to him. He could not go back to his own people. In Chicago, for the most part, the blacks lived crowded into a few streets on the South Side. "I want t

er rollers of cotton bales long since dead. Long before there were any cotton bales to roll black men in boats on rivers in Africa had sung it. Young blacks in boats floated down rivers and came to a town they intended to attack at dawn. There was bravado in singing the song then. It was addressed to the women in the town t

the African villages long ago when the song floated up from the river men arose and prepared for battle. The song was a defiance, a taunt. That was all gone now. The young negro's house was at the foot of the garden and Walter with his wife lay upstairs in the larger house situated on high ground. It was a sa

For some reason he knew he could not return to his house in the suburb that night. In the morning he would go to the office and wait there until Rosalind came. Then? He did not know what he would do then. "I shall have to make up some story. In the morning I shall have to telephone Cora and make up some silly story," he thought. It was an absurd thing that he, a grown man, could not spend a night abroad, in the fields without the necessity of explanations. The thought irritated him and he arose and walked again. Under the stars in the sof