"Good friends—yes. Must it stop at that?"
"And neighbours," she continued. "We have always been good neighbours. Perhaps that is the trouble."
"How—the trouble?"
"Well, it's like this," she said, and again the toe began to gyrate in the snow. "We've known each other so well, and so long, there isn't anything—much—left to know, is there? Could you stand the boredom of a person who has no new thoughts, no strange ideas, no whims—nothing that you haven't already seen and known a hundred times?"
"There never could be boredom with you, dear. Just to have you with me, to feast on you, to know you were mine, would be enough for me."
"For about a week. You'd soon tire of a feast with no flavor to it. I would, at any rate. . . . Oh, I see it working out already. I don't want to gossip, and Jack and Marjorie have been everything they could to me, but already I can see them settling down to the routine—the deadly routine. Bad enough anywhere, but on these prairies, with their isolation, their immensity—unbearable. I couldn't stand it."
I studied her for a moment in silence. Jean might know all about me; I might have no new thoughts, new ideas, new whims, but it was quite plain I didn't know all about her.
"Still, there are many couples on these prairies living happily, I suppose," I ventured.
"You suppose," she repeated. "That's right. It is just supposition. Nobody knows; that is, the public doesn't know. But what is their happiness? An ox-like acceptance of the routine. Breakfast, work; dinner, work; supper, work; sleep; breakfast—the whole circle over again. I couldn't stand it, Frank; there's no use pretending I could. I'd—I'd run away with some one!"
"Jean!"