Pastor Lahmann laughed again.
“I, too, am ambitious. I have a good Swiss ambition.”
Miriam smiled into the mild face.
“You have a beautiful English provairb which expresses my ambition.”
Miriam looked, eagerly listening, into the brown eyes that came round to meet hers, smiling:
“A little land, well-tilled,
A little wife, well-willed,
Are great riches.”
Miriam seemed to gaze long at a pallid, rounded man with smiling eyes. She saw a garden and fields, a firelit interior, a little woman smiling and busy and agreeable moving quickly about ... and Pastor Lahmann—presiding. It filled her with fury to be regarded as one of a world of little tame things to be summoned by little men to be well-willed wives. She must make him see that she did not even recognise such a thing as “a well-willed wife.” She felt her gaze growing fixed and moved to withdraw it and herself.
“Why do you wear glasses, mademoiselle?”