“Me? I haven't got time to be. And, anyhow, there's always a crowd here.”
“You can be lonely in a crowd, and I guess—is there any one around here you like better than me?”
“Oh, what's the use!” cried poor Tillie. “We can talk our heads off and not get anywhere. You've got a wife living, and, unless you intend to do away with her, I guess that's all there is to it.”
“Is that all, Tillie? Haven't you got a right to be happy?”
She was quick of wit, and she read his tone as well as his words.
“You get out of here—and get out quick!”
She had jumped to her feet; but he only looked at her with understanding eyes.
“I know,” he said. “That's the way I thought of it at first. Maybe I've just got used to the idea, but it doesn't seem so bad to me now. Here are you, drudging for other people when you ought to have a place all your own—and not gettin' younger any more than I am. Here's both of us lonely. I'd be a good husband to you, Till—because, whatever it'd be in law, I'd be your husband before God.”
Tillie cowered against the door, her eyes on his. Here before her, embodied in this man, stood all that she had wanted and never had. He meant a home, tenderness, children, perhaps. He turned away from the look in her eyes and stared out of the front window.
“Them poplars out there ought to be taken away,” he said heavily. “They're hell on sewers.”