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. "I thought so once, and I suppose I'll think so again,"
she answered. "The truth is I've loved you some days, and some days I
haven't. I've never believed much in it, you know--I wasn't that kind of
woman. It always meant so much less to me than to others."

It was true again, he admitted it. She had never been--and he had
always known it--"that kind of woman." She had safely mocked at sex
only because she had never felt its significance. From the depths of his
misery, he told himself, while he faced her, that she would be perfect
if she were only a little different--if she were only "that kind
of woman." She possessed a thousand virtues, he was aware; she was
generous, honourable according to her lights, loyal, brave, charitable,
and unselfish. But it is the woman of a single virtue, not a thousand,
that a man exalts.

"Yes, I suppose it always meant less to you than to others," he repeated
dully.

"It wasn't my fault--why do you blame me?" she responded quickly. "Men
hold a woman to blame when she doesn't love, however ill they may use
her as soon as she does it. Oh, I know you're not that sort--you needn't
explain it. You are different, and this is why I am half loving you even
now. Last night when I awoke and heard a mockingbird in the cedars,
I told myself that I could never be happy away from you. But when
the light came, I wanted to see the world, and I forgot you. I'm only
twenty-one. I'm too young to tie myself down forever."

"My mother married when she was sixteen," he replied, partly because
he could think of nothing else to say at the moment, partly because he
honestly entertained the masculine conviction that the precedent in some
way constituted an argument.

"And a sensible marriage it was!" retorted Molly with scorn. "She's had
a hard enough lot and you know it." In her earnestness she had almost
assumed the position of Sarah's champion.

"Yes, I reckon it is," he returned, wounded to the quick.