"You'd better not encourage him." "I don't." "Be careful!--What are you laughing at?" "That old story of the kiss!" "It makes me mad." "He doesn't try to kiss me, John. I shouldn't be horrified if he did. You needn't be afraid for me." "All right. It's your affair. Want any wood chopped?" "Rupert did a stack for me." "This is pretty dull for you, isn't it? When does--" She interrupted. "At the end of next week, I think." She was somewhat tired of answering the question. That night, as she sat with George, he said, "When we're like this, I wish you'd wear your wedding-ring." "I said I wouldn't." "It couldn't do any harm." "It could--to me." "You talk as if it's dirt," he said. "Oh, no, I know it's gold! Let's keep our bargains and talk of something else. Tell me what you have been doing today." His face reddened to a colour that obscured his comeliness. "You can't get round me like that." "What do you mean?" She lifted her head so that he saw her round white throat. "Why should I condescend to get round you, as you call it?" "That's it!" he shouted angrily. "That's the word!" He rose and knocked his pipe against the stove. "You're too damned free with your condescension, and I'm sick of it." He left the kitchen angrily, and two minutes later she heard the distant banging of the garden door. She wanted to run after him, for she was afraid of the impulses of his anger. She felt a dreadful need to conciliate, for no other reason than his body's greater strength, but she let him go, and though for several days she did not see him, she had no sense of liberty. He would come back, she knew, and she found herself planning unworthy little shifts, arranging how she would manage him if he did this or that, losing her birthright of belief that man and woman could meet and traffic honestly together. They could not do it, she found, when either used base weapons: she, her guile, or he, his strength; but if he used his strength, how could she save herself from using guile? She had to use it, and she clung fiercely to it, though she knew that, at last, it would be wrested from her. * * * * *