man as was ever
different in St. Ange was Timothy Drake. He got smashed on the head by a
falling tree up to Camp 3, and his wits was crushed out of him. But do
you know, what was left of Tim was as gentle and decent and perticerlar
as you'd want to find in any human. He never drank again, never cussed
nor stormed, and I've laid it by as an item, that the badness and
sameness of men lies in their wits--if you want a companionable, safe
man, you've got to turn to sich as are bereft of their senses--and most
women is that foolhardy they prefer wits and diviltry, to senselessness
and decency."

Joyce smiled feebly at this philosophy.

"You are the one to decide," Isa went on. "Now see here, girl, I ain't
lived fifty years for nothing. I ain't been in and out of my neighbour's
houses, in times when all the closets are open, without learning a heap
about things. Men is men and there's no getting around that. So long as
you can, you better let them think they amounts to something even when
you own to yourself they don't. Private opinions ain't going to bring on
trouble; it's only when they ain't private. Now granting that man is
what we know he is--it's plain common sense to get as much out of him as
you can. Make the place you live in the best thing he's got; and just so
long as you can, keep yourself a little bit out of his reach--tantalize
him. There ain't nothing so diverting to a man as to claw after a woman,
when he's got the belief in himself that when he _wants_ to clutch her,
he can.

"I know the kind of naked feeling you've got when you sense your power
with men first; but that wears off when you get your bearings and find
out that it's only a shuffle in the game, anyway. Land of love! if man
and woman was _all_, then when they came face to face with life they
would get smashed; but housework tempers the matter powerfully; and
man's work out among other men; and then when children come and you have
to contrive and pinch, why you just plod along and don't ever get
flustered. It's just the first dash of cold water in the face, child;
after that all lives is pretty much the same."

Joyce had grown quieter as Isa's words droned on. It was, for all her
commotion, a very humdrum thing that had happened to her.

As it was she, Joyce, was going to be very respectable. She'd manage,
and Jude would always find her worth his while to be decent for. She
would wrench what she could from him and St. Ange and be a commonplace