"No, not exactly, maybe," said he. "Like I said, you'd get tired of looking at me if that's all there was to do."
She broke out into laughter, wholly hysterical, which he did not in the least understand. He knew the tragedy of her blindness, but did not know that he himself was tragic.
"You are odd," said she. "You've made me laugh." She both laughed and wept.
"You see, it's this way," he went on eagerly. "It's all right in the summer time, when you can get out of doors, and the weather is pleasant, like it is now. But in the winter time—that's when it gets lonesome! The snow'll be eight feet deep all around here. We have to go on snow shoes all the winter through. Now, if we was shut in here alone together—or if you was shut in here all by yourself, and still lonesomer, me being over in the other house mostly—the evenings would seem awful long. They always used to, to me."
She could not answer at all. A terrible picture was coming before her. He struggled on.
"If that Annie Squires girl came out here, she'd be a lot of help. But how can you tell whether she'd stay all winter? That's the trouble with women folks—you can't tell what they'll do. She wouldn't want to stay here long unless she was settled down some way, would she? She ain't married, like you, ma'am. She might get restless, like enough, wouldn't she?"
"I don't know," said Mary Gage, suddenly turning away. She felt a vast cloud settling down upon her. Ten days? She had been married ten days! What would ten years mean?
"I wish I didn't have to think at all," said she, her lips trembling.
"So do I, ma'am," said Sim Gage to his lawful wedded wife with engaging candor. "I sure do wish that."