“I am building a utopia in the woods,” he said, later that afternoon, when he was introduced to Dorthea’s cousin, Sanne.

“Are you now,” she asked, with bemusement. “And how far have you gotten with it?”

“Oh, I’d say about as far as that preacher,” Merian answered, his face atwinkle.

Sanne cast her eyes downward, then looked across the room, where Dorthea was busy attending to her other guests. “I had better see if my cousin needs any help,” she said, and with that slipped out of the range of his admiration.

“I see you met Sanne,” Content remarked, when he found Merian in a corner off to himself, appraising the room.

“I did.”

“What did you think of her?”

“She is lovely,” Merian answered, holding in check anything that might appear overeager. “Is she married?”

“Widowed,” his friend answered. “Since a year ago.”

“How many children did he leave her?”

“They had none.”

“That must be very hard for her,” Merian said, looking out into the crowded room and trying to make sight of her. He said nothing else but felt a growing wave of empathy for the woman who had suffered what everyone he knew seemed forced to bear: to be widow or widower or else orphan — as he himself was — or in some other manner bereft of kin and mooring to fellow beings. It is simply how things go, he thought, and no use complaining over it.

When Sanne gathered the courage to look over at him again, a sadness sat on his face that made her want to reach toward him but also to draw away, for she could not read what was behind it and distrusted any emotion in people so close to the surface.

What if he is in his nature just a sad man? she wondered. She could imagine few worse things than to be perpetually phlegmatic. It would be worse than a curse, she surmised. Not that she herself was all light humors, but she believed in governing what was willful or overstrong in Nature.

When he caught sight of her staring at him, Merian flashed her a smile of such easy warmth she could not help but beam brightly in return. Why do the sad ones always have such lovely smiles? she thought to herself, starting to smile about the corners of her mouth almost involuntarily, though there was nothing insincere in her gesture.

Before he left that afternoon, Merian made his way purposefully toward her. “We did not talk as much as I would have liked,” he said, “but I hope I might happen to see you again.”

“I will be back for Whitsunday,” she volunteered.

“What is that?” he asked, knowing neither what it meant nor, more important, how far away it was.

“It is also called Pinkster. Seven Sundays from today.”

“We never had that where I grew up,” he told her.

“It will be a grand carnival.”

“I think I would enjoy that,” he answered, and took his leave, much better pleased than the Sunday before.

As he made his way home on the western road he watched the sun beginning to set over the countryside and its final plunge of red intensity over his own land. I am building a utopia in the wilderness, he said to himself, quite satisfied, as he egged Ruth Potter up the hill to his front door. And his spirits were so lifted that it did not seem so much like a joke to him as a thing he might actually achieve.

His first year he had approached the farm with all the enthusiasm of a new transaction, but he went to work on the fields that spring with a new confidence and even greater energies than the one before. As the first shoots of his crops poked forth from the black soil, his diligence toward them was unflagging. He was not grumpy when he rose in the morning to go out, but eager, and he worked through the day sustained by this same feeling. He found himself hopeful in ways he had not dared express before, even in the final days of his servitude. He thought often of the woman he would meet again at the new holiday and imagined her within his rooms. It was greatly relaxing to his mind, and he would fall asleep with romantic notions he had not entertained since his separation from Ruth.

When Whitsunday came, he dressed in his clean shirt again and saddled the mule, then climbed astride, carefully guarding a bouquet of wildflowers in one hand. Outside of the settlement, the mule slowed down in front of the house where it had paused before, but he was able to keep control of it this time and persuade it to continue on. The animal obeyed and carried him on into town, where they stopped outside the inn and rested.

Merian dusted his shirt, rearranged the flowers in his hand, and went inside. The first person he saw when he opened the door was Dorthea, and he found his courage leave him, not knowing what was proper behavior under the circumstances.

“Merian, what pretty flowers,” she commented when she saw them.

“I am glad you like them. I thought they might look nice on the table,” he answered, thrusting them at her.

“Sanne, look at the lovely flowers Merian brought from his place,” Dorthea said, drawing out her cousin.

The other woman came over slowly, cautious both of him and of seeming too bold. “They look wonderful,” she offered stiffly. “What are they?”

“Why, they are utopia flowers,” Merian answered. “You must see the place I picked them someday.”

Dorthea looked at her cousin with a sidelong glance from a corner of her eye, but Sanne cast her look away in shyness at Merian’s offer — although she did not fail to smile.

“If you keep asking, perhaps I will,” Sanne replied at last, before hurrying away across the room on an invented errand.

Throughout the afternoon the two of them went on to trade nervous and youthful looks when they thought no one else might notice them. During songs they gazed at each other more brazenly, staring directly across the room as they sang. It was a joy for him to hear songs sung he had not heard since his childhood, as well as those altogether strange to him, which Sanne said she learned as a young girl.

At the end of the evening he bid her good-bye and asked again when they might next meet.

“I am staying here for a few weeks,” she answered. “You can stop by when it pleases you.”

Merian promised to visit, and even though he thought they had gotten on well, he was careful not to presume that the invitation meant anything more than that.

That evening, after their guests had departed, Dorthea and her husband questioned their houseguest good-naturedly but reminded her all the same how little they still knew about Merian and advised her to proceed with what care she thought due.

“How much do we ever truly know about anyone, other then the way they strike us ourselves?” she asked, but said no more.

Husband and wife looked at each other across the table. Both, however, allowed she was a grown woman and said there was nothing more to be argued. Still, they reminded her again it was her own self at stake.

Two days after the celebration, Merian found himself in town again for reasons scattered and varied, and after buying supplies he stopped off at the inn to call on his friends. As it grew late they invited him to stay on for dinner, out of politeness, and were genuinely surprised when he accepted.

“You don’t have to be in the fields in the morning?” Content wanted to know.

“I suppose things there can get on a bit without me,” Merian answered.

“Why, Merian,” Content said. “I’ve never known you to be slack about work before.”

“A man can’t just work and nothing else,” Merian replied, looking at Sanne. “There are other things.”

The four of them, each with their own ideas, then went out into the kitchen, where the men sat down at table as the women served.

At the end of dinner the entire company found themselves in quite good spirits, and even a bit drunk as the evening ended. “Well, I must get back,” Merian said, bidding good-bye to his hosts.

“It is too dark to be out on the road now, even for you,” Content warned. “Stay in one of the empty rooms and get a good start in the morning.”