well the way I live, and--and--he knows I don't expect too much out of
life no more. Just a quiet kind of team-work, he puts it--pulling
together fifty-fifty, and somebody's hand to hold on to when old fellow
Time hits you a whack in the knees from behind. But he ain't old when he
talks that way, Kess; he--he's beautiful to me."

"Does he wear a mask when he makes love?"

"He's got a fine face."

"So that's the way you're playing it, is it? Love-stuff?"

"Oh, I've had all the love-stuff knocked out of me. Three years of
eating out my heart is about all the love-stuff I can handle for a
while. He don't want that in a woman. I don't want it in him. He's just
a plain, good man I never in my life could dream of having. A good home
in a good town where life ain't like a red-eyed devil ready to hit in
deep between the shoulder-blades. I know why he says he can see his wife
in me. He knows I'm the kind was cut out for that kind of life--home and
kitchen and my own parsley in my own back yard. He knows, if he marries
me, carpet slippers seven nights in the week is my speed. I never want
to see a 'roof,' or a music-show, or a cabaret again to the day I die.
He knows I'll fit in home like a goldfish in its bowl. Life made a
mistake with me, and it's going to square itself. It's fate, Kess;
that's what it is--fate!"

She clapped her hands to her face, sobbing down into them.

He glanced about him in quick and nervous concern.