"I shouldn't have cared--it would have been better than your expression
at this minute. It's all your fault anyway, for not falling in love with
Judy Hatch, as I told you to."

"Don't worry. Perhaps I shall in the end. Your tantrums would wear the
patience of a Job out at last. It seems that you can't help despising a
man just as soon as he happens to love you."

"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