As she took his arm outside, he asked dully:—
"Which way now?"
"This is our way first," and Margaret turned up the road away from the village, past the doctor's house. They walked in silence. When she pointed out Renault's hospital, Falkner looked at it indifferently. "Queer sort of place for a hospital. What kind of a man is he?"
"A queer sort of man," Margaret replied.
Beyond the hospital the road mounted the hillside, passing through dark woods. Beneath their feet the frozen snow crunched icily.
"Good people that blacksmith and his wife," Falkner remarked. "That was the kind of thing I dreamed it would be,—a place, a spot, of our own, no matter how plain and small, and some one to look across the table as that gray-haired woman looks at the old fellow, as if she knew him to the roots…. I hope it will be some time before they get the apartment hotel in Grosvenor! … A man has his work," he mused.
"Yes, the man has his work."
"And a woman her children."
"And the woman her children."
"So that is what life comes to in the middle distance,—the man has his work and the woman her children…. But one doesn't marry for that! There is something else."