“If they land me in the bug-house, they can write on your tombstone when you die, ’Hanna Long Burkhardt went stark raving mad crazy with hucking at home because I let her life get to be a machine from six-o’clock breakfast to eight-o’clock bed, and she went crazy from it.’  If that’s any satisfaction to you, they can write that on your tombstone.”

He mopped his brow this time, clearing his throat.

“You knew when we married, Hanna, they called me ‘Silent’ Burkhardt.  I never was a great one for talking unless there was something I wanted to say.”

“I knew nothin’ when I married you.  Nothin’ except that along a certain time every girl that can gets married.  I knew nothin’ except—­except—­”

“Except what?”

“Nothin’.”

“I’ve never stood in your light, Hanna, of having a good time.  Go ahead.  I’m always glad when you go up-town with the neighbor women of a Saturday evening.  I’d be glad if you’d have ’em in here now and then for a little sociability.  Have ’em.  Play the graphophone for ’em.  Sing.  You ’ain’t done nothin’ with your singin’ since you give up choir.”

“Neighbor women!  Old maids’ choir!  That’s fine excitement for a girl not yet twenty-seven!”

“Come; let’s go to a moving picture, Hanna.  Go wrap yourself up warm.”

“Movie!  Oh no; no movie for me with you snorin’ through the picture till I’m ashamed for the whole place.  If I was the kind of girl had it in me to run around with other fellows, that’s what I’d be drove to do, the deal you’ve given me.  Movie!  That’s a fine enjoyment to try to foist off on a woman to make up for eight years of being so fed up on stillness that she’s half-batty!”

“Maybe there’s something showin’ in the op’ry-house to-night.”

“Oh, you got a record to be proud of, John Burkhardt:  Not a foot in that opera-house since we’re married.  I wouldn’t want to have your feelin’s!”

His quietude was like a great, impregnable, invisible wall inclosing him.

“I’m not the man can change his ways, Hanna.  I married at forty, too late for that.”

“I notice you liked my pep, all righty, when I was workin’ in the feed-yard office.  I hadn’t been in it ten days before you were hangin’ on my laughs from morning till night.”

“I do yet, Hanna—­only you don’t laugh no more.  There’s nothin’ so fine in a woman as sunshine.”

“Provided you don’t have to furnish any of it.”

“Because a man ’ain’t got it in him to be light in his ways don’t mean he don’t enjoy it in others.  Why, there just ain’t nothin’ to equal a happy woman in the house!  Them first months, Hanna, showed me what I’d been missin’.  It was just the way I figured it—­somebody around like you, singin’ and putterin’.  It was that laugh in the office made me bring it here, where I could have it always by me.”

“It’s been knocked out of me, every bit of laugh I ever had in me; lemme tell you that.”