Bon pauses and looks at Henry; now he can see Henry's face. He says, * You will be cold. You are cold now. You haven't been asleep, have you? Here.
He swings the cloak from his shoulders and holds it out.
* No, Henry says.
* Yes. Take it. I'll get my blanket.
Bon puts the cloak about Henry and goes and takes up his tumbled blanket and swings it about his shoulders, and they move aside and sit on a log. Now it is dawn. The east is gray; it will be primrose soon and then red with firing and once more the weary backward marching will begin, retreating from annihilation, falling back upon defeat, though not quite yet. There will be a little time yet for them to sit side by side upon the log in the making light of dawn, the one in the cloak, the other in the blanket; their voices are not much louder than the silent dawn itself: * So it's the miscegenation, not the incest, which you cant bear.
Henry doesn't answer.
* And he sent me no word? He did not ask you to send me to him?
No word to me, no word at all? That was all he had to do, now, today; four years ago or at any time during the four years. That was all. He would not have needed to ask it, require it, of me. I would have offered it. I would have said, I will never see her again before he could have asked it of me. He did not have to do this, Henry. He didn't need to tell you I am a nigger to stop me. He could have stopped me without that, Henry.
* No! Henry cries. ‐ No! No! I will ‐ I'll He springs up; his face is working; Bon can see his teeth within the soft beard which covers his sunken cheeks, and the whites of Henry's eyes as though the eyeballs struggled in their sockets as the panting breath struggled in his lungs ‐ the panting which ceased, the breath held, the eyes too looking down at him where he sat on the log, the voice now not much louder than an expelled breath: * You said, could have stopped you.
What do you mean by that?
Now it is Bon who does not answer, who sits on the log looking at the face stooped above him.
Henry says, still in that voice no louder than breathing: * But now? You mean you ‐ * Yes.
What else can I do now? I gave him the choice. I have been giving him the choice for four years.
Think of her. Not of me: of her.
* I have. For four years. Of you and her. Now I am thinking of myself.
* No, Henry says. ‐ No. No.
* I cannot?
* You shall not.
* Who will stop me, Henry?
* No, Henry says. ‐ No. No. No.
Now it is Bon who watches Henry; he can see the whites of Henry's eyes again as he sits looking at Henry with that expression which might be called smiling. His hand vanishes beneath the blanket and reappears, holding his pistol by the barrel, the butt extended toward Henry.
* Then do it now, he says.
Henry looks at the pistol; now he is not only panting, he is trembling; when he speaks now his voice is not even the exhalation, it is the suffused and suffocating inbreath itself: * You are my brother.
* No I'm not. I'm the nigger that's going to sleep with your sister. Unless you stop me, Henry.
Suddenly Henry grasps the pistol, jerks it free of Bon's hand stands so, the pistol in his hand, panting and panting; again Bon can see the whites of his inrolled eyes while he sits on the log and watches Henry with that faint expression about the eyes and mouth which might be smiling.
* Do it now, Henry, he says.
Henry whirls; in the same motion he hurls the pistol from him and stoops again, gripping Bon by both shoulders, panting.
* You shall not! he says. ‐ You shall not! Do you hear me?
Bon does not move beneath the gripping hands; he sits motionless, with his faint fixed grimace; his voice is gentler than that first breath in which the pine branches begin to move a little: *
You will have to stop me, Henry. ' And he never slipped away,' Shreve said. 'He could have, but he never even tried. Jesus, maybe he even went to Henry and said, "I'm going, Henry" and maybe they left together and rode side by side dodging Yankee patrols all the way back to Mississippi and right up to that gate; side by side and it only then that one of them ever rode ahead or dropped behind and that only then Henry spurred ahead and turned his horse to face Bon and took out the pistol; and Judith and Clytie heard the shot, and maybe Wash Jones was hanging around somewhere in the back yard and so he was there to help Clytie and Judith carry him into the house and lay him on the bed, and Wash went to town to tell the Aunt Rosa and the Aunt Rosa comes boiling out that afternoon and finds Judith standing without a tear before the closed door, holding the metal case she had given him with her picture in it but that didn't have her picture in it now but that of the octoroon and the kid. And your old man wouldn't know about that too: why the black son of a bitch should have taken her picture out and put the octoroon's picture in, so he invented a reason for it. But I know. And you know too. Don't you? Don't you, huh?" He glared at Quentin, leaning forward over the table now, looking huge and shapeless as a bear in his swaddling of garments. 'Dont you know? It was because he said to himself, "If Henry don't mean what he said, it will be all right; I can take it out and destroy it. But if he does mean what he said, it will be the only way I will have to say to her, I was no good; do not grieve for me." Aint that right?
Aint it? By God, aint it?"
'Yes,' Quentin said.
'Come on,' Shreve said. 'Let's get out of this refrigerator and go to bed."
NINE
At first, in bed in the dark, it seemed colder than ever, as if there had been some puny quality of faint heat in the single light bulb before Shreve turned it off and that now the iron and impregnable dark had become one with the iron and icelike bedclothing lying upon the flesh slacked and thin‐clad for sleeping. Then the darkness seemed to breathe, to flow back; the window which Shreve had opened became visible against the faintly unearthly glow of the outer snow as, forced by the weight of the darkness, the blood surged and ran warmer, warmer. ' University of Mississippi,' Shreve's voice said in the darkness to Quentin's right. 'Bayard attenuated forty miles (it was forty miles, wasn't it?); out of the wilderness proud honor semesterial regurgitant."
'Yes,' Quentin said. 'They were in the tenth graduating class since it was founded."
'I didn't know there were ten in Mississippi that went to school at one time,' Shreve said.
Quentin didn't answer. He lay watching the rectangle of window, feeling the warming blood driving through his veins, his arms and legs. And now, although he was warm and though while he had sat in the cold room he merely shook faintly and steadily, now he began to jerk all over, violently and uncontrollably until he could even hear the bed, until even Shreve felt it and turned, raising himself (by the sound) onto his elbow to look at Quentin, though Quentin himself felt perfectly all right. He felt fine even, lying there and waiting in peaceful curiosity for the next violent unharbingered jerk to come.
'Jesus, are you that cold?" Shreve said. 'Do you want me to spread the overcoats on you?"
'No,' Quentin said. 'I'm not cold. I'm all right. I feel fine."
'Then what are you doing that for?"
'I don't know. I cant help it. I feel fine."