"Well, naturally, they'll think me a fool for encouraging you," said Owen rather irritably. "If only you would have been guided by me! But it's been the same all through. You chose to go your own way, and the end will be that we shall have to leave Greenriver and go to live somewhere else."
"Leave Greenriver?" She echoed the words dully.
"Well, what can we do?" He spoke impatiently. "You have never seemed very happy here, so far as the people go. And now, after this fiasco, we may expect the neighbourhood to drop us altogether."
"Drop us?"
"Well, you know what I mean. Oh, I don't care two straws about the people themselves. They're a stupid lot anyway, and too conventional to know how to got the best out of life. But still—Greenriver's my home, and I thought we should learn to settle down here."
"And I've prevented you?"
"Well, you've never hit it off with the people, have you? And after this I don't see how we can settle down. I'm not going to have people neglecting my wife or being rude to her, but still this Badminton Club affair is a pretty big slap in the face for both of us."
Toni, resting her small chin on the cup of her hollowed hands, stared at him thoughtfully, and in her eyes, still wet with tears, he caught again that elusive hint of a tragic womanhood which had puzzled him on a former occasion.
"Eva was right," she said, and her voice was low. "She said I was out of place here, and so I am."
"Mrs. Herrick said that?" Owen's anger suddenly swung round. "Then it was a damned silly thing to say, and I'm surprised you listened to it."