She kept her eyes lowered. The pale composure of her face did not vary as she made reply. "I am sorry if you are not satisfied. I thought you had got--all you wanted."
He pulled the pipe from his mouth and laid it on the table. "Do you think any man is satisfied with husks?" he said.
Her lip curled a little. She said nothing.
He took her by the arms, not violently but with firmness. "Maud," he said, and there was urgency in his voice, "where's the use of behaving like this? Do you think it's going to make life easier, happier? Is it doing God's work in the world to be always fighting the inevitable? I'm rough, I know; but I'm white. Why can't you take me as I am, and make the best of me?"
He had never thus appealed to her before. She stood stiffly between his hands. But still she did not look at him. Her eyes were upon the flowers on the table that lay scorching and slowly shrivelling under his pipe.
"I really don't know what you want," she said, in a tone of cold aloofness.
"And don't care!" said Jake, with sudden vehemence. "On my soul, I sometimes think to myself that if you treated Sheppard as you treat me, he had some reason for giving you a hiding."
Her eyelids quivered sharply at the rough allusion, but she did not raise them. "You are rather--hard to please," she said, in a low voice.
"Am I?" said Jake. "And do you ever try to please me by any chance?"
A slight tremor went through her. "I give you submission--obedience," she said. "You have--all that you married me for."