"Well, it's like this," she said, and again the toe began to gyrate in the snow. "We've known each other so well, and so long, there isn't anything--much--left to know, is there? Could you stand the boredom of a person who has no new thoughts, no strange ideas, no whims--nothing that you haven't already seen and known a hundred times?" "There never could be boredom with you, dear. Just to have you with me, to feast on you, to know you were mine, would be enough for me." "For about a week. You'd soon tire of a feast with no flavor to it. _I_ would, at any rate. . . . Oh, I see it working out already. I don't want to gossip, and Jack and Marjorie have been everything they could to me, but already I can see them settling down to the routine--_the deadly routine_. Bad enough anywhere, but on these prairies, with their isolation, their immensity--unbearable. I couldn't stand it." I studied her for a moment in silence. Jean might know all about me; I might have no new thoughts, new ideas, new whims, but it was quite plain I didn't know all about her. "Still, there are many couples on these prairies living happily, I suppose," I ventured. "You suppose," she repeated. "That's right. It is just supposition. Nobody knows; that is, the public doesn't know. But what is their happiness? An ox-like acceptance of the routine. Breakfast, work; dinner, work; supper, work; sleep; breakfast--the whole circle over again. I couldn't stand it, Frank; there's no use pretending I could. I'd--I'd run away with some one!" "Jean!" "Yes, I know what you're thinking. But it would break the routine, anyway; it wouldn't be that way I would lose my soul; perhaps that way I might save it." "You're a strange girl, Jean." "Yes? After all these years? I am so glad. As long as I am strange you will be interested in me. That's the trouble with you; you're not strange. I know all about you. And I wouldn't be your housekeeper for life for the sake of being your lover for a week." "Jean!" "Shocking, isn't it? But true. Don't you know that's what happens, nearly always? It must happen, unless there are new points of interest always arising. I have the misfortune to think, and so I see these things in advance, and try to shield you from them." "The misfortune to think?" "Of course. Otherwise I could accept the ox-routine and grind out my soul in the treadmill of three meals a day. I suppose that's what people call morality--ideal wife and mother, etc. I'd run away from it all." I, too, punched the snow with my heel. "I never heard you talk like that, Jean," I said at length. "I didn't think you thought--along those lines. You wouldn't excuse people who run--who disregard their marriage vows?" "The first of which is to love," she shot back. "When that fails, all fails. Why make a mockery of it?" "But I would love you, always--always. You would be to me the only--the only _possible_ girl in the world!"