“Buy freedom.” Was she thinking of divorce? Apparently not, for she went on, “No woman’s free who hasn’t enough to live on without asking anybody for it. So I’m going to Nome to avoid slavery.”
“Your husband doesn’t mind?”
“He’s dead.” No trace of emotion in the low voice. But yielding to the invitation in the girl’s eyes, she told in brief outline of a hard life. The last six years of it alone. “But as to that, I was alone before. Only people didn’t know it, and so things were easier.”
“How easier?”
“There are always people to help the women who don’t need help”—and then something of the disillusion that followed upon her husband’s death; of difficult bread-winning; of inforced close relations with men through her work, and what she thought of them. “Exceptions? Well, I suppose so. I’ve once or twice thought the exception had come my way.”
“And were you wrong—always wrong?”
“You see the kind of men a bookkeeper in a western town is thrown with—oh, you have to walk very warily, to hold yourself down, to seem to misunderstand—not to let your disgust cost you your bread and butter.” Hildegarde looked at the pure outline of the profile again. It was all very well to talk of having learnt lessons and of being over thirty, thought the girl. Mrs. Locke’s troubles aren’t over yet.
But perhaps she would find something better than money on this journey, a real friend, or even—Several of the passengers were disposed to be conspicuously civil. There was that lawyer with the clever face. He was walking the deck now in the giant’s company, and every time he passed he looked at Mrs. Locke.
“I’m sure that man wants to come and talk to you,” said Hildegarde.
“If you get up, I shall go below.”