"I dunno why I'm tellin' you all this," she broke off, suddenly. "Guess it's because I ain't had no one to talk to confidential fer so long, an' you look like you understand."
"I do understand," I told her.
She nodded.
"Well, this spring," she went on, "I begun to hate everything, same as I hated the plains. I couldn't exactly hate my children; but it seemed to me they never did nothin' right, an' I jest had to keep tellin' myself they was mine, an' they was young an' didn't understand how they worried me by things they done. Then the hands drove me 'most crazy. They was one man—why, jes' to have that man pass the door made me feel sick, an' yet I hadn't nothin' again' him, really. An' finally, last of all, Jim—even Jim—"
Her voice broke. Sudden tears filled her eyes, quenching for the moment the sparks that burned there.
"Jim's a good man," she continued, steadily, after a moment's pause. "He's a good, hard-workin' man. He's good to me in his way, an' he's good to the children. But of course he ain't got much time for us. He never was a talker. He's a worker, Jim is, an' when night comes he's so tired he falls asleep over the fire. But everything he done always seemed pretty near right to me—till this spring."
Her voice flattened and died on the last three words. For a moment she sat silent, brooding, a strange puzzled look in her brown eyes. The crowd around Dr. Harland was thinning out, and people were leaving the hall. We could easily have reached her now, but I sat still, afraid to dam the verbal freshet that was following so many frozen winters.
"This spring," she went on, at last, "it jest seems like I can't bear to have even Jim around." She checked herself and touched my arm timidly, almost apologetically. "It's a terrible thing to say, ain't it?" she almost whispered, and added slowly, "It's a terrible thing to feel. I can't bear to see him come into the room. I can't bear the way he eats, or the way he smokes, or the way he sets down, or the way he gits up, or the way he breathes. He does 'em all jest like he always has. They ain't nothin' wrong with 'em. But I can't bear 'em no more." She beat her hands together softly, with a queer, frantic gesture. Her voice took on a note of rising excitement. "I can't," she gasped. "I can't, I can't!"
I rose.
"Come," I said, cheerfully. "Dr. Harland is free now. I want you to talk to her. She can help you. She's a very wise woman."