"Oh, I guess you only stayed on here because you had to."
Nora's work dropped in her lap.
"Is life always like that?" she said with bitter sadness. "The things you've wanted so dreadfully seem only to bring you pain when they come."
He gave her a swift glance, but went on smoking quietly. She went over to the window again and stood looking out at the stretch of prairie. Presently she spoke in a low voice, but her words were addressed as much to herself as to him:
"Month after month, this winter, I used to sit here looking out at the prairie. Sometimes I wanted to scream at the top of my voice. I felt that I must break that awful silence or go mad. There were times when the shack was like a prison. I thought I should never escape. I was hemmed in by the snow and the cold and the stillness; cut off from everything and everybody, from all that had been the world I knew."
"Are you going to quit right now with Ed?" he asked gently.
Nora went slowly back to her chair. "You seem in a great hurry to be rid of me," she said, with the flicker of a smile.
"Well, I guess we ain't made a great success of our married life, my girl." He went over to the stove to knock the ashes from his pipe. "It's rum, when you come to figure it out," he said, when it was once more lighted; "I thought I could make you do everything I wanted, just because I was bigger and stronger. It sure did look like I held a straight flush. And you beat me."
"I?" said Nora in astonishment.
"Why, sure. You don't mean to say you didn't know that?"