“Take a woman—a wife. Some box-heads, when their wife falls in love with another man, give her up like they was takin’ off an old shoe, sayin’ they love her so much that they want to see her happy—which she can’t be, she says, unless she gets the other man. But don’t you go to believin’ that kind of fairy romance, ma’am. When a man is so willin’ to give up his wife to another man he’s sure got a heap tired of her an’ don’t want her any more. He’s got his eye peeled for Number Two, an’ he’s thankin’ his wife’s lover for makin’ the trail clear for the matrimonial wagon. But givin’ up Number One to the other man gives him a chance to pose a lot, an’ mebbe it’s got a heap of effect on Number Two, who sort of thinks that if she gets tied up to such a sucker she’ll be able to wrap him around her finger. But if he loves Number Two, he’ll be mighty grumpy to the next fellow that goes to makin’ sheeps eyes at her.”
“That is a highly original view,” she said, laughing, feeling that she ought to be offended, but disarmed by his ingenuousness. “And so you think that love and hate are inseparable passions.”
“I reckon you can’t know what real love is unless you have hated, ma’am. Some folks say they get through life without hatin’ anybody, but if you’ll look around an’ watch them, you’ll find they’re mostly an unfeelin’ kind. You ain’t one of them kind, ma’am. I’ve watched you, an’ I’ve seen that you’ve got a heap of spirit. Some of these days you’re goin’ to wake up. An’ when you do, you’ll find out what love is.”
“Don’t you think I love Mr. Masten?” she said, looking at him unwaveringly.
He looked as fairly back at her. “I don’t reckon you do, ma’am. Mebbe you think so, but you don’t.”
“What makes you think so?” she demanded, defiantly.
“Why, the way you look at him, ma’am. If I was engaged to a girl an’ she looked at me as critical as you look at him, sometimes, I’d sure feel certain that I’d drawed the wrong card.”
Still her eyes did not waver. She began to sense his object in introducing this subject, and she was determined to make him feel that his conclusions were incorrect—as she knew they were.
“That is an example of your wonderful power of observation,” she said, “the kind you were telling me about, which makes you able to make such remarkable deductions. But if you are no more correct in the others than you are in trying to determine the state of my feelings toward Mr. Masten, you are entirely wrong. I do love Mr. Masten!”
She spoke vehemently, for she thought herself very much in earnest.