“You are very cruel,” she answered wearily, letting her hands fall heavily in her lap; “but I suppose you can’t help it.”
“Have you thought what life means for you?” He flung out the words between his set teeth.
“Yes. Mother will live with me—and I shall work.”
He started and looked at her for some moments silently.
“Do you realize it, Bridget?” he enquired at last.
“Perfectly,” she said calmly. “I shall work all day. In the mornings I shall teach, in the afternoons I shall write in my own room. The evenings I shall usually spend in unsuccessful attempts to keep my temper.”
“And what sort of woman will you be in five—ten years’ time?”
“God knows!” she cried wildly, her forced calm breaking up. “I don’t. That is nothing to do with me! Some people would tell me—people with lofty, high-toned minds, you know,” she added with a sneer—“that I shall be a very fine character, chastened, subdued, with latent strength, and that sort of thing. Perhaps if I were an archangel, with none of the lower passions, I might be; but I think it’s much more likely I shall be merely a bad tempered, irritable, middle-aged person.”
“And yet—” he began.
She turned her head, with an exasperated, restless movement.