the importance lies."

"It's Missis as gets it," said Kirk. "It doesn't stop wi' us." "Ay,
it's the wife as gets it, ninety per cent," they all concurred.

"And who SHOULD have the money, indeed, if not your wives? They have
everything to do with the money. What idea have you, but to waste it!"

"Women waste nothing--they couldn't if they tried," said Aaron Sisson.

There was a lull for some minutes. The men were all stimulated by
drink. The landlady kept them going. She herself sipped a glass of
brandy--but slowly. She sat near to Sisson--and the great fierce
warmth of her presence enveloped him particularly. He loved so to
luxuriate, like a cat, in the presence of a violent woman. He knew
that tonight she was feeling very nice to him--a female glow that
came out of her to him. Sometimes when she put down her knitting, or
took it up again from the bench beside him, her fingers just touched
his thigh, and the fine electricity ran over his body, as if he were
a cat tingling at a caress.

And yet he was not happy--nor comfortable. There was a hard, opposing
core in him, that neither the whiskey nor the woman could dissolve or
soothe, tonight. It remained hard, nay, became harder and more deeply
antagonistic to his surroundings, every moment. He recognised it
as a secret malady he suffered from: this strained, unacknowledged
opposition to his surroundings, a hard core of irrational, exhausting
withholding of himself. Irritating, because he still WANTED to give
himself. A woman and whiskey, these were usually a remedy--and music.
But lately these had begun to fail him. No, there was something in