II + 

Donald Mahon’s homecoming, poor fellow, was hardly a nine days’ wonder even. Curious, kindly neighbors came in⁠—men who stood or sat jovially respectable, cheerful: solid business men interested in the war only as a byproduct of the rise and fall of Mr. Wilson, and interested in that only as a matter of dollars and cents, while their wives chatted about clothes to each other across Mahon’s scarred, oblivious brow; a few of the rector’s more casual acquaintances democratically uncravated, hushing their tobacco into a bulged cheek, diffidently but firmly refusing to surrender their hats; girls that he had known, had danced with or courted of summer nights, come now to look once upon his face, and then quickly aside in hushed nausea, not coming any more unless his face happened to be hidden on the first visit (upon which they finally found opportunity to see it); boys come to go away fretted because he wouldn’t tell any war stories⁠—all this going on about him while Gilligan, his glum majordomo, handled them all with impartial discouraging efficiency. + 

“Beat it, now,” he repeated to young Robert Saunders, who with sundry contemporaries to whom he had promised something good in the way of damaged soldiers, had called. + 

“He’s going to marry my sister. I’d like to know why I can’t see him,” young Robert protested. He was in the uncomfortable position of one who has inveigled his friends into a gold mine and then cannot produce the mine. They jeered at him and he justified his position hotly, appealing to Gilligan. + 

“G’wan now, beat it. Show’s over. G’wan now.” Gilligan shut the door on him. Mrs. Powers, descending the stairs said: + 

“What is it, Joe?” + 

“That damn Saunders hellion brought his whole gang around to see his scar. We got to stop this,” he stated with exasperation, “can’t have these damn folks in and out of here all day long, staring at him.” + 

“Well, it is about over,” she told him, “they have all called by now. Even their funny little paper has appeared. ‘War Hero Returns,’ you know⁠—that sort of thing.” + 

“I hope so,” he answered without hope. “God knows they’ve all been here once. Do you know, while I was living and eating and sleeping with men all the time I never thought much of them, but since I got civilized again and seen all these women around here saying, Ain’t his face terrible, poor boy, and Will she marry him? and Did you see her downtown yesterday almost nekkid? why, I think a little better of men after all. You’ll notice them soldiers don’t bother him, specially the ones that was overseas. They just kind of call the whole thing off. He just had hard luck and whatcher going to do about it? is the way they figure. Some didn’t and some did, the way they think of it.” + 

They stood together looking out of the window upon the sleepy street. Women, quite palpably “dressed,” went steadily beneath parasols in one direction. “Ladies’ Aid,” murmured Gilligan. “W.C.T.U. maybe.” + 

“I think you are becoming misanthropic, Joe.” + 

Gilligan glanced at her smooth contemplative profile almost on a level with his own. + 

“About women? When I say soldiers I don’t mean me. I wasn’t no soldier any more than a man that fixes watches is a watchmaker. And when I say women I don’t mean you.” + 

She put her arm over his shoulder. It was firm, latent in strength, comforting. He knew that he could embrace her in the same way, that if he wished she would kiss him, frankly and firmly, that her eyelids would never veil her eyes at the touch of his mouth. What man is for her? he wondered, knowing that after all no man was for her, knowing that she would go through with all physical intimacies, that she would undress to a lover (?) with this same impersonal efficiency. (He should be a⁠—a⁠—he should be a gladiator or a statesman or a victorious general: someone hard and ruthless who would expect nothing from her, of whom she would expect nothing. Like two gods exchanging golden baubles. And I, I am no gladiator nor statesman nor general: I am nothing. Perhaps that’s why I want so much from her.) He put his arm over her shoulders. + 

Niggers and mules. Afternoon lay in a coma in the street, like a woman recently loved. Quiet and warm: nothing now that the lover has gone away. Leaves were like a green liquid arrested in mid-flow, flattened and spread; leaves were as though cut with scissors from green paper and pasted flat on the afternoon: someone dreamed them and then forgot his dream. Niggers and mules. + 

Monotonous wagons drawn by long-eared beasts crawled past. Negroes humped with sleep, portentous upon each wagon and in the wagon bed itself sat other negroes upon chairs: a pagan catafalque under the afternoon. Rigid, as though carved in Egypt ten thousand years ago. Slow dust rising veiled their passing, like Time; the necks of mules limber as rubber hose swayed their heads from side to side, looking behind them always. But the mules were asleep also. “Ketch me sleep, he kill me. But I got mule blood in me: when he sleep, I sleep; when he wake, I wake.” + 

In the study where Donald sat, his father wrote steadily on tomorrow’s sermon. The afternoon slept without. + 

The Town: + 

War Hero Returns.⁠ ⁠… + 

His face⁠ ⁠… the way that girl goes on with that Farr boy.⁠ ⁠… + 

Young Robert Saunders: + 

I just want to see his scar.⁠ ⁠… + 

Cecily: + 

And now I’m not a good woman any more. Oh, well, it had to be sometime, I guess.⁠ ⁠… + 

George Farr: + 

Yes! Yes! She was a virgin! But if she won’t see me, it means somebody else. Her body in another’s arms.⁠ ⁠… Why must you? Why must you? What do you want? Tell me: I will do anything, anything.⁠ ⁠… + 

Margaret Powers: + 

Can nothing at all move me again? Nothing to desire? Nothing to stir me, to move me, save pity?⁠ ⁠… + 

Gilligan: + 

Margaret, tell me what you want. I will do it. Tell me, Margaret.⁠ ⁠… + 

The rector wrote, “The Lord is my shepherd: I shall not want.” + 

Donald Mahon knowing Time as only something which was taking from him a world he did not particularly mind losing, stared out a window into green and motionless leaves: a motionless blur. + 

The afternoon dreamed on toward sunset. Niggers and mules.⁠ ⁠… At last Gilligan broke the silence. + 

“That old fat one is going to send her car to take him riding.” + 

Mrs. Powers made no reply. + 