The sound of music from the distant church has long since ceased. Through the open window there comes now only the peaceful and myriad sounds of the summer night. Beyond the desk Hightower sits, looking more than ever like an awkward beast tricked and befooled of the need for flight, brought now to bay by those who tricked and fooled it. The other three sit facing him; almost like a jury. Two of them are also motionless, the woman with that stonevisaged patience of a waiting rock, the old man with a spent quality like a charred wick of a candle from which the flame has been violently blown away. Byron alone seems to possess life. His face is lowered. He seems to muse upon one hand which lies upon his lap, the thumb and forefinger of which rub slowly together with a kneading motion while he appears to watch with musing absorption. When Hightower speaks, Byron knows that he is not addressing him, not addressing anyone in the room at all. “What do they want me to do?” he says. “What do they think, hope, believe, that I can do?”
Then there is no sound; neither the man nor the woman have heard, apparently. Byron does not expect the man to hear. ‘He don’t need any help,’ he thinks. ‘Not him. It’s hindrance he needs’; thinking remembering the comastate of dreamy yet maniacal suspension in which the old man had moved from place to place a little behind the woman since he had met them twelve hours ago. ‘It’s hindrance he needs. I reckon it’s a good thing for more folks than her that he is wellnigh helpless.’ He is watching the woman. He says quietly, almost gently: “Go on. Tell him what you want. He wants to know what you want him to do. Tell him.”
“I thought maybe—” she says. She speaks without stirring. Her voice is not tentative so much as rusty, as if it were being forced to try to say something outside the province of being said aloud, of being anything save felt, known. “Mr. Bunch said that maybe—”
“What?” Hightower says. He speaks sharply, impatiently, his voice a little high; he too has not moved, sitting back in the chair, his hands upon the armrests. “What? That what?”