"Love costs them a lot."
"In what way?"
"They work for us. Now there's Billy's grocery store. If Billy didn't
have me, he'd be doing things that he likes better. You wouldn't believe
it, but Billy wanted to study law, but it meant years of hard work
before he could make a cent, and he and I would have wasted our youth in
waiting--and so he went into business--and that's a big thing for a man
to do for a woman--to give up a future that he has hoped for--and that's
why I feel that I can't do enough for Billy--"
"I don't see why you should look at it in that way," she said, and her
eyes were big and bright. "Women are queens, and they honor men when
they marry them--"
"If women are queens," I told her, "men are kings--Billy honored me--"
She smiled at me. "Oh, you blessed dear--" she said, and all of a sudden
she came over and knelt beside me. "What would you think of a man who
married a woman whom the world called beautiful and brilliant, and
whom--whom princes wanted to marry--And he was a very plain man, except
that he had a lot of money--millions and millions--and after he married
the woman whom he had said that he worshiped, he wanted to make just an
every-day wife of her. He wanted her to stay at home and look after his
house. He told her one night that it would be a great happiness for him
if he could come in and find her warming--his slippers. And he said that
his ideal of a woman was one who--who--held a child in her arms--"
I looked down at her. "Well, right in the beginning," I said, "I should
like to know if the woman loved the man--"
She stared at me and then she stood up. "If she did, what then? She had
not married to be--his slave--"
I pointed to the mother robin on the branch below. "I wonder if she
calls it slavery! You see--she is so busy--building her nest she hasn't
time to think whether Cock Robin is singing fewer love songs than he
sang early in the spring."
She laughed and was down on her knees beside me again. "Oh, you funny
little practical thing! But it wasn't because I missed the love songs.
He sang them. But because I couldn't be an every-day wife--"
"What kind of wife did you want to be?"
"I wanted to travel with him alone--I planned a honeymoon in the desert,
and we had it--and I planned after that to sail the seas to the land of
Nowhere--and we sailed--and then--I wanted to go to the high plains--and
ride and camp--and into the forests to hunt and fish--but he wouldn't.
He said that we had wandered enough. He wanted to build a house--and
have me warm--his slippers--"
"And so you quarreled?"
"We quarreled--great hot heavy quarrels--and we said things--horrid
things--that we can't forgive--"
She was sobbing on my shoulder and I said softly: "Things that _you_
can't forgive?"
"Yes. And that _he_ can't. That's why I ran away from him."