simply a fashion, which one man had set and the rest followed
unreasoningly. I liked them to ask me to marry them, and to say, No. I
despised them. The mother heart had not swelled in me yet; I did not know
all men were my children, as the large woman knows when her heart is grown.
I was too small to be tender. I liked my power. I was like a child with a
new whip, which it goes about cracking everywhere, not caring against what.
I could not wind it up and put it away. Men were curious creatures, who
liked me, I could never tell why. Only one thing took from my pleasure; I
could not bear that they had deserted her for me. I liked her great dreamy
blue eyes, I liked her slow walk and drawl; when I saw her sitting among
men, she seemed to me much too good to be among them; I would have given
all their compliments if she would once have smiled at me as she smiled at
them, with all her face breaking into radiance, with her dimples and
flashing teeth. But I knew it never could be; I felt sure she hated me;
that she wished I was dead; that she wished I had never come to the
village. She did not know, when we went out riding, and a man who had
always ridden beside her came to ride beside me, that I sent him away; that
once when a man thought to win my favour by ridiculing her slow drawl
before me I turned on him so fiercely that he never dared come before me
again. I knew she knew that at the hotel men had made a bet as to which
was the prettier, she or I, and had asked each man who came in, and that
the one who had staked on me won. I hated them for it, but I would not let
her see that I cared about what she felt towards me.

She and I never spoke to each other.

If we met in the village street we bowed and passed on; when we shook hands
we did so silently, and did not look at each other. But I thought she felt
my presence in a room just as I felt hers.