I rebelled fiercely against John's decision that we must not take her with us on our return to the frontier; privately, I resolved to dispute it, and, if necessary, I saw myself abducting the child--my own child.

My days and nights as the ship crept on were full of a long ache to possess her; the defrauded tenderness of the last four years rose up in me and sometimes caught at my throat.

I could think and talk and dream of nothing else.
John indulged me as much as was reasonable, and only once betrayed by a yawn that the subject was not for him endlessly absorbing.

Then I cried and he apologized.

'You know,' he said, 'it isn't exactly the same thing.