Oh, how I did want a friend in these days. I wished at times that I was a Catholic and could go to confession. Père Saint Palais was so lovely, and his voice had that beguiling winsomeness that I longed to have it comfort me, set me straight. For I was beginning to feel there was a great hard wall between Dan and me. I tried my best to love him. Oh, what was love!
Yet, some of the wives I knew had fallen into a settled routine, I was going to say indifference. They kept their houses well, looked after their babies. Their husbands went out in the evenings to smoke or talk politics, trade, crops, and they ran into a neighbor's to gossip. Why could not these things satisfy me? There were sudden impulses that led me to kiss Dan, to almost beg that he would love me as he had in those first few years, when I did not really want it. Perhaps I had tired out his love. Mother was sure married people "settled."
I knew father was watching me very closely. I tried to hide my thoughts with a girlish gayety. It occurred to me more than once that I might have to choose between Dan and father, and in my secret heart I knew I should go with father.
Polly was beginning to crawl out of her seclusion a little. I met her one day at the bookstore where I was buying some articles for father. I could not understand why she should color up so. She really did look enchanting with the bit of lisse roll to her widow's cap inside the bonnet, often called Marie Stuart. She had a "book muslin" collar worked with black and little turn-over cuffs of the same material. Her white skin and her wavy hair, her full red lips with their tempting curves almost fascinated me. Did Dan ever kiss her? I wondered. Could she take a man "straight to the devil?" I shuddered.
"You don't look well," she began in her mellifluous tones. "You are thin and pale. Do you know I used to think you were quite a pretty little girl, but I suppose we all do go off some," laughing. "I tell mother I never want to be a horrid-looking old woman like granny. Wasn't she frightful? So I hope I'll die somewhere along middle life, when I can make a decent-looking corpse. And Norman's coming home! Don't you suppose if Norman had stayed here you would have married him instead of Dan?"
"I think Dan made me marry him," I gasped, as if the words were wrested from me.
"He's awfully imperious, isn't he? I suppose you give in to his whims, but the way to keep your charm over such a man is to deny him, to dispute with him—up-and-down quarrels, and the making up is delicious! Marriage is queer, isn't it, and the wrong people do get together! Is the old couplet true—
"'There's a house 'tother side of the way,
And there they make Lucifer matches?'"
Another customer entered, and Polly turned to her. My parcel came. I paid for it and went out.