"You were raised on a farm?"
"Yes. In Minnesota."
"Did you do work like that?" She pointed at a thrashing-machine in the field.
"Yes, I ploughed and sowed and reaped and mowed. I wasn't on the farm for my health."
"You're very strong, aren't you?" she asked, admiringly.
"In a slab-sided kind of a way—yes."
Her eyes grew abstracted.
"I like strong men. Ollie was a little man, not any taller than I am, but when he was drunk he was what men call a—a holy terror. He struck me with the water-pitcher once—that was just before baby was born. I wish he'd killed me." She ended in a sudden reaction to hopeless bitterness. "It would have saved me all these months of life in this terrible country."
"It might have saved you from more than you think," he said, quietly, tenderly.
"What do you mean?"