door and you heard some harmless creature inside enquire who I was, as if that could hurt me. You were mad when you heard that I played to a party of sailors. You are mad because I’m talked about. I’ve always been talked about, and I always will be, not that I get up in the morning meaning to be, but it seems to happen. Now I won’t go to the Bentons’ because I want rest on my Sundays. And if, after seeing me all the week, you still want to see me on a Sunday, all I can say is you’re a glutton. If I hadn’t tried to regulate this friendship of ours you’d have killed it years ago. You men are all alike. You want to swallow a woman whole, and then you wonder why you get sex indigestion.”
“You’ll live to be knocked down yet,” he retorted, annoyed that he could never get the best of her.
“I wonder why that thought seems to give such pleasure to a large proportion of the human race?” she said meditatively. “It doesn’t thrill me to think that anyone who differs from me will get a crack on the skull. That’s just like the relatives, Bob. They used to curl their tongues with joy round the things fate had in store for me.”
“Look here,” he groaned, “if you compare me with those damned relatives again ———”
“Then don’t be like them, dear Bob.”
He turned back to his desk. “I say, have you any more to do here?”
“A little.”
“Well, I don’t care, clear out. I’ve got to write this leader.”
She made a face at him, kissed the top of his head, took her things and went out. As she walked towards the centre of the town she stopped once and drove her right heel into the clay path as if she were crushing a centipede.
