"Blissfully so. It wouldn't be possible for a man to have the advantages of a training like the one I have given him and not be able to make a woman happy."
"But he didn't make you happy."
"Me? Oh, I wasn't made for bondage of any kind. Most women marry because they're bored or because they're curious. In either case they pay a penalty. Marriage provides no panacea. One only becomes more bored—with one's own husband—or more curious about other people's husbands."
"Are you curious? You don't look as if you cared enough to be curious."
"I do care." She held her cigarette at arm's length and flicked off its ash with her little finger. "Mr. Wray, I'll let you into a secret. A woman never appears so bored as when she is intensely interested in something—never so much interested as when she is bored to extinction. I am curious. I am trying to learn (without asking you impertinent questions) how on earth you and Mrs. Wray ever happened to marry."
She tilted her chin impudently and looked down her nose at him, her eyes masked by her dark lashes, through which it hardly seemed possible that she could see him at all. Jeff laughed. She had her nerve with her, he thought, but her frankness was amusing. He liked the way she went after what she wanted.
"Oh, Camilla—I don't know. It just happened, I guess. She's more your kind than mine. I'm a good deal of a scrub, Mrs. Cheyne. You see, I never went to college—or even to high school. Camilla knows a lot. She used to teach, but I reckon she's about given up the idea of trying to teach me. I'm a low-brow all right. I never read a novel in my life."
"You haven't missed much. Books were only meant for people who are willing to take life at second-hand. One year of the life you lived on the range is worth a whole shelf-ful. The only way to see life is through one's own eyes."
"Oh, I've seen life. I've been a cowboy, rancher, speculator, miner, and other things. And I've seen some rough times. But I wouldn't have worked at those things if I hadn't needed the money. Now I've got it, maybe I'll learn something of the romantic side of life."
She leaned back and laughed at him. "You dear, delicious man. Then it has never occurred to you that during all these years you've been living a romance?"