“It's very nice of you to be interested in me. You are much more interested than I am--and it's a compliment, a great compliment. I think you are very loyal--if I can call it loyalty--if you'll let me call it that. I like my work here; I'm perfectly happy doing it. It was hard at first. I knew absolutely nothing of housekeeping and managing things when I came here. I had to work--to learn book-keeping and accounts--cooking--building--carpentering--stock-raising--oh, everything. I had to feel that I knew very nearly as much about everything as the people who were to do what I told them. And of course that was quite true; but it wasn't at all easy. It has taken me eight years to get as far as I am now. And I could go on for years more. There's nobody on the place whom I can't manage: they all like me. I'm quite comfortable--if I can be let alone.” ... Speaking so, she believed it. But, thinking it over she was driven to explain herself. “People seem to think that girls--that women--care for nothing but one thing--being married, I mean. I'm sure that's a mistake. One gets interested, one may get absorbed--and then there's a difficulty. For it's very true, I think, that unless we care for the one thing, and that thing only, we don't care for it at all. At least, that is how I feel about it. I have got lots of interests in life--all these things here--management of things. I don't want Nevile--or to be married. I don't want anything of the sort; I can't be bothered. I cared once--frightfully; but now I don't care. All that was long ago; at the beginning--eight years ago. Now it's done with, I only want to be let alone--to do my work here. It doesn't seem to me much to ask; but--” ... It was then that she looked at him, and was beyond the power of his sounding. She grew vehement, full of still, passionless rage. She was like a goddess pronouncing a decree; she was final. “I don't want to marry Nevile. It bores me. And he doesn't want me, really. He thinks he does, because he thinks that he can't have me any other way. But he would be miserable, and so should I. It seems to me impossible. You can't put life into dead things. When he came back here the other day he had been away a year: a year and ten days. He had written to me twice--” Chevenix interrupted. “Excuse me,” he said. “How many times had you written to him?” He had guessed at pique; but he was wrong. She replied slowly. “I forwarded his letters. I hadn't written at all.” Her simplicity! Chevenix allowed her to go on. “The thing--all that it began with--was over. I felt that. I showed him that the first evening he was here. He has never spoken to me again--of that sort of thing, and I don't think he ever will. He doesn't understand being refused anything. I suppose he never has been before in his life.” “Weren't you, perhaps, a little bit short?” he hazarded; and she considered the possibility.