“I can’t,” said he. And he—his real self—began to look from his eyes—and to look at her.
In spite of herself, she became serious. “No—you can’t,” assented she, absently. “You’ve changed—every time I’ve seen you. But not in that one respect. Whenever I look at you, I still see—as I did that first time—farms and factories—and thousands of men and women at work——”
“And children,” he interrupted, a strange, somehow ferocious note in his quiet voice.
“I don’t forget them,” said she. “I try to, but I don’t.... No, you’ll not change sides. And you’ll marry some woman on that side, and she’ll——”
“I’ll marry the woman I want—when I can afford to marry,” said he. “Women aren’t on one side or the other. This is a man’s fight. A woman—she goes with the man who takes her.”
She smiled with some raillery. “Be careful to select the woman of that sort,” said she, “or you may have to change your mind—suddenly and rather disagreeably—about women.”
He made a large gesture of indifference.
“You don’t care about women?” she asked.
A look of melancholy came into his face. He said with a quaint smile, “They began it. They don’t care about me.”
“Why not?”