calmly.

She leaned one hand upon the table, the other lay at her cheek, and her
head bent forward at him. "Because," she answered, "because I have tried
to be thoughtful for you."

"Oh, as to that," he said--"as to that!" and he shrugged his shoulders
slightly.

"You don't care a straw," she said sharply, "you never did."

He looked up suddenly at her, a great bitterness in his face, and laughed
strangely, as he answered: "Care! Good God! Care! . . . What's the
use of caring? It's been all a mistake; all wrong."

"That is no news," she said wearily. "You discovered that long ago."

He looked out of the door across the warm fields again; he lifted his
eyes to that mountain road; he looked down at her. "I haven't any hope
left now, Alice. Let's be plain with each other. We've always been
plain, but let us be plainer still. There are those rice fields out
there, that banana plantation, and the sugar-cane stretching back as far
as the valley goes--it's all mine, all mine. I worked hard for it. I
had only one wish with it all, one hope through it all, and it was, that
when I brought you here as my wife, you would come to love me--some time.
Well, I've waited, and waited. It hasn't come. We're as far apart to-
day as we were the day I married you. Farther, for I had hope then, but
I've no hope now, none at all."

They both turned towards the intemperate sunlight and the great hill.