"
"I wonder if that's true?" she said a little sadly, turning away from
him until her eyes rested on the green rise of ground over the meadow,
"I've seen men like that as soon as they were sure of their wives, and
I've hated them for it."
"What I can't understand," he pursued, not without bitterness, "is why
in thunder a man or a woman who isn't married should put up with it for
an instant?"
At his words she left the door and came slowly back to his side, where
he bent over the meal trough.
"The truth is that I like you better than anyone in the world, except
grandfather," she said, "but I hate love-making. When I see that look
in a man's face and feel the touch of his hands upon me I want to strike
out and kill. My mother was that way before I was born, and I drank it
in with her milk, I suppose."
"I know it isn't you fault, Molly, and yet, and yet---"
She sighed, half pitying his suffering, half impatient of his
obtuseness. As he turned away, her gaze rested on his sunburnt neck,
rising from the collar of his blue flannel shirt, and she saw that his
hair ended in a short, boyish ripple that was powdered with mill-dust.
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