‘I h-h-hate you,’ she said, ‘I wish I wasn’t married to you, oh I do wish I wasn’t.’
‘And so do I,’ returned Larrie grimly. Even dinner did not restore his equanimity, albeit he made a tolerably hearty one with four boiled eggs, quantities of bread and butter, and half a tin of sardines as dessert.
Dot stayed out in the garden and refused food entirely.
She wept oceans of tired, hot tears and told herself she was the most miserable woman on earth. Later, when only her [p 54] ]eyelashes were wet and the quiet evening wind had cooled her cheeks and heart, she still wondered why girls all the world over were in such a hurry to marry.
She thought wistfully of her careless, unfettered girlhood that she had cut so short through her own wilfulness.
‘I might have had eight more years,’ she whispered to herself, ‘twenty-five is the proper age to marry, he would have been older and more patient too, and I should never have felt like this.’
She put down her head on the old seat back and sobbed again heartbrokenly for ‘like this’ meant that love was dying.
Then the wind dried her tears once more, and she sat staring at a patch of light that fell from the dining-room lamp out upon the little lawn: she was wondering drearily how she should be able to live out all the other days of her life.
Larrie stepped out on the verandah, she could see the red of his cigar and the dusky outlines of his figure.
[p 55]
]‘Dot,’ he called.