“Well, it seemed to me that if I were caught in such a routine—having to live my life on a plan fixed hundreds of years ago—never allowed to be my natural human self—it seems to me I’d die of weariness, unless I were imbecile or became so.”
“You wouldn’t mind it if you’d been educated for it.” She thought for a few minutes, then said: “Unfortunately, I wasn’t. My father’s—second wife persuaded him to educate me in the modern way. That makes this life almost impossible for me; it seems narrow and unreal, and useless. And it’s so dull, so deadly dull!”
“Why don’t you get out of it—break away?”
“A woman is helpless. Besides, I’m not sure—”
She rose and put on her Tyrol hat and wrapped her brown sash about her waist.
“I’ll walk with you as far as the road,” he said. “I don’t think I could find it alone.”
As they went, both silent and she constrained, he noted that she watched him curiously, as it seemed to him, critically, whenever she thought he was not seeing. They came to the cross-road and he asked, “When am I to see you again?”
She flushed painfully. “I—I’m afraid it’s impossible.”
He put out his hand. She hesitated, then gave him hers. “Good-bye,” she said.
“No; that wasn’t what I meant,” he explained, clasping her hand. She made a faint effort to draw it away, then let it lie in his. “Impossible, you say? Then you don’t wish to let me see you again?”