“Please, please!”

“It’s you that are unstable!  You talk at things and play at things, but you’re scared.  Would I mind it if you and I went off to poverty, and I had to dig ditches?  I would not!  But you would.  I think you would come to like me, but you won’t admit it.  I wouldn’t have said this, but when you sneer at Myrtle and the mill——­If I’m not to have good sensible things like those, d’ you think I’ll be content with trying to become a damn dressmaker, after you?  Are you fair?  Are you?”

“No, I suppose not.”

“Do you like me?  Do you?”

“Yes——­No!  Please!  I can’t talk any more.”

“Not here.  Mrs. Haydock is looking at us.”

“No, nor anywhere.  O Erik, I am fond of you, but I’m afraid.”

“What of?”

“Of Them!  Of my rulers—­Gopher Prairie. . . .  My dear boy, we are talking very foolishly.  I am a normal wife and a good mother, and you are—­oh, a college freshman.”

“You do like me!  I’m going to make you love me!”

She looked at him once, recklessly, and walked away with a serene gait that was a disordered flight.

Kennicott grumbled on their way home, “You and this Valborg fellow seem quite chummy.”

“Oh, we are.  He’s interested in Myrtle Cass, and I was telling him how nice she is.”

In her room she marveled, “I have become a liar.  I’m snarled with lies and foggy analyses and desires—­I who was clear and sure.”

She hurried into Kennicott’s room, sat on the edge of his bed.  He flapped a drowsy welcoming hand at her from the expanse of quilt and dented pillows.

“Will, I really think I ought to trot off to St. Paul or Chicago or some place.”

“I thought we settled all that, few nights ago!  Wait till we can have a real trip.”  He shook himself out of his drowsiness.  “You might give me a good-night kiss.”

She did—­dutifully.  He held her lips against his for an intolerable time.  “Don’t you like the old man any more?” he coaxed.  He sat up and shyly fitted his palm about the slimness of her waist.

“Of course.  I like you very much indeed.”  Even to herself it sounded flat.  She longed to be able to throw into her voice the facile passion of a light woman.  She patted his cheek.

He sighed, “I’m sorry you’re so tired.  Seems like——­But of course you aren’t very strong.”

“Yes. . . .  Then you don’t think—­you’re quite sure I ought to stay here in town?”

“I told you so!  I certainly do!”

She crept back to her room, a small timorous figure in white.

“I can’t face Will down—­demand the right.  He’d be obstinate.  And I can’t even go off and earn my living again.  Out of the habit of it.  He’s driving me——­I’m afraid of what he’s driving me to.  Afraid.

“That man in there, snoring in stale air, my husband?  Could any ceremony make him my husband?

“No.  I don’t want to hurt him.  I want to love him.  I can’t, when I’m thinking of Erik.  Am I too honest—­a funny topsy-turvy honesty—­the faithfulness of unfaith?  I wish I had a more compartmental mind, like men.  I’m too monogamous—­toward Erik!—­my child Erik, who needs me.