She ignored the exception.
“I can’t express it exactly. The people here are just like people everywhere else—most of them. But the country looks so big and unoccupied. And blue mountains are so alluring. There might be anything beyond them … adventures, opportunities.…”
This idea was a bit too rarefied for Ramon, but he could agree about the mountains.
“It’s a fine country,” he assented. “For those that own it.”
“It’s just a feeling I have about it,” she went on, trying to express her own half-formulated idea. “But then I have that feeling about life in [pg 71] general, and there doesn’t seem to be anything in it. I mean the feeling that it’s full of thrilling things, but somehow you miss them all.”
“I have felt something like that,” he admitted. “But I never could say it.”
This discovery of an idea in common seemed somehow to bring them closer together. His hand tightened gently about her arm; almost unconsciously he drew her toward him. But she seemed to be all absorbed in the discussion.
“You have no right to complain,” she told him. “A man can do something about it.”
“Yes,” he agreed, speaking a reflection without stopping to put it in conventional language. “It must be hell to be a woman … excuse me … I mean.…”
“Don’t apologize. It is—just that. A man at least has a fighting chance to escape boredom. But they won’t even let a woman fight. I wish I were a man.”