"You're very quiet; you must feel going away," she said.
"Yes," George admitted; "I feel it a good deal."
"Ah! I don't know anybody else who would have gone—I feel selfish and shabby in letting you."
"I don't think you could stop me."
"I haven't tried. I suppose I'm a coward, but until you promised to look after matters, I was afraid of the future. I have friends, but the tinge of contempt which would creep into their pity would be hard to bear. It's hateful to feel that you are being put up with. Sometimes I thought I'd go back to Canada."
"I've wondered how you stood it as long as you did," George said incautiously.
"Aren't you forgetting? I had Dick with me then." Sylvia paused and shuddered. "It would be so different now."
George felt reproved and very compassionate.
"Yes," he said, "I'm afraid I forgot; but the whole thing seems unreal.
It's almost impossible to imagine your living on a farm in western
Canada."
"I dare say it's difficult. I'll confess I'm fond of ease and comfort and refinement. I like to be looked after and waited on; to have somebody to keep unpleasant things away. That's dreadfully weak, isn't it? And because I haven't more courage, I'm sending you back to the prairie."