- In this chapter, we learn the backstory of Marie and Frank's match-gone-wrong.
- Marie's father, Albert Tovesky, was one of the most well respected Bohemian men in Omaha. Marie was his daughter by a second wife. When she was sixteen, Frank Shabata joined her class at Omaha High School, having just moved to Nebraska from Bohemia.
- Frank was quite the dandy back then. He wore gloves and carried a yellow cane. He gave himself the air of a fancy guy, and said that his mother was a wealthy landowner. He often seemed troubled though, and of course, this really drove the young girls wild.
- One weekend, Frank and Marie went rowing together. Afterwards, Marie went straight to her father and announced that she was engaged.
- Her father flipped, and decided to take her to a Catholic school for girls in St. Louis.
- Now that Frank couldn't have Marie, though, he loved her all the more. Before she left, he managed to meet with her and give her a dozen photographs of himself to keep with her.
- Marie spent a year at the convent school, until she turned 18. She met Frank at the train station in St. Louis, and they ran off with each other to get married.
- Her father forgave her, and bought them a farm in the country.
- Frank takes a yearly trip to the city; otherwise, he works the farm "like a demon" (2.7.5).
- By the time Carl came to visit Alexandra, they had been living together on the Divide for 5 years.