“I’d be just like this all the time. You think I’d change--under emotion--when we were married. I don’t think I would. You don’t know how all the things I’ve thought and seen have influenced me. I couldn’t go into marriage believing in it much. I couldn’t--go through it--trusting it much. And when I was cold and I’d nearly always be that way, you’d be disappointed if not angry. And if I did do as you say--relax--I’d be spoiling it by not trusting my own feeling. Don’t you think I know? Don’t you think I almost give in and then some devil of analysis comes and prods me into a watch on myself? I haven’t anything to give, Walter--except just what you’ve had. And the reason I can’t marry you is because while you say and I say that companionship is enough we both know it isn’t all you’d want. And it’s all you’d find. It’s all I can give to any man.” “But, my God, Margaret, women and men have to marry--.” “I know. It’s all right for other women--most other women. I’m not speaking for them now. They can keep reasonable and still have enough feeling to transcend reason now and then--carry them through it.” She still held his hand in a kind of cold comfort and he could feel her fingers tighten. “I’ve tried to have feeling lately, Walter--tried to see if I could find enough--and that kind of feeling isn’t there. I can’t--I can’t--don’t ask me.” She withdrew her hand now and sat looking straight ahead of her. A cloud slipped past the moon and as the earth brightened in the cold white light Walter, turning to look at her saw her quiet and rigid, tears in her open eyes, a slim statue of what she claimed to be, sterility of feeling for him or any man. “I’m afraid that it’s true,” he said. “Perhaps you can’t.” At that, coming as a terribly dreary acceptance, she let the sobs come and for a long while she wept, her head in her own hands. Perhaps she wept for him, perhaps for herself. He did not offer to touch her again--as if her dearth of feeling had spread to him in those few minutes. When at last she straightened herself again, he started the car and they sped silently back through the country towards St. Pierre. “Good-by, then,” he said, as they reached her door and he unlocked it. “Good-by.” She saw his face, heavy and lined and stern and it seemed to hurt her cruelly. “I’ve cheated you,” she said pitifully, “but it’s been myself too. It is myself.” He hesitated. For a moment he seemed ready to try again and then he saw the pity in her face stiffen into resistance. Bending, he kissed her lightly. “Nothing I can do for you?” “Nothing, thank you.” She heard his car back away from the door. As long as she could hear it she stood listening. Then with swift definiteness she went to her closet and pulled out the trunk standing there. CHAPTER XX BARBARA BREAKS LOOSE