It was this expression of dumb questioning which had so often reminded her of the look in the eyes of Reuben's hound, and as she met it now, she flinched a little from the thought of the pain she was inflicting.
"I'm not good and faithful, Abel; I'm not patient, I'm not thrifty, I'm not anything your wife ought to be." "You're all I'm wanting, anyway, Molly," he replied quietly, but without moving toward her.
"I feel--I am quite sure we could not be happy together," she went on, hurriedly, as if in fear that he might interrupt her before she had finished.
"Do you mean that you want to be free ?" he asked after a minute.
"I don't know, but I don't want to marry anybody.

All the feeling I had went out of me when grandfather died--I've been benumbed ever since--and I don't want to feel ever again, that's the worst of it." "Is this because of the quarrel ?" "Oh, know--you know, I was always like this.

I'm a thing of freedom--I can't be caged, and so we'd go on quarrelling and kissing, kissing and quarrelling, until I went out of my mind.

You'd want to make me over and I'd want to make you over, like two foolish children fighting at play." It was true what she had said, and he realized it, even though he protested against it.

She was a thing of freedom as much as one of the swallows that flashed by in the sunlight.
"And you don't want to marry me?
You want to be free--to be rich ?" "It isn't the money--but I don't want to marry." "Have you ever loved me, I wonder ?" he asked a little bitterly.
For an instant she hesitated, trying in some fierce self-reproach to be honest.