"You don't understand me. It's not because I'm dead and sluggish that I don't want anything, but because I've had fight enough in me to triumph over my desires. So now everything's mine."
"Fust you say as how you're happy because you've got nothing, and now you say as everything's yourn. How am I to know wot you mean?"
"Well, compare my case with yours. You've got everything you want, and yet in reality you've got nothing."
"That's nonsense, Alice." He spoke more gently, for he had come to the conclusion that sorrow and loneliness had affected her wits.
"It isn't. You've got what you set out to get—Boarzell Moor, and success for Odiam; but in getting it you have lost everything that makes life worth while—wife, children, friends, and—and—love. You're like the man in the Bible who rebuilt Jericho, and laid the foundations in his firstborn, and set up the gates in his youngest son."
"There you go, Alice! lik the rest of them—no more understanding than anyone else. Can't you see that it's bin worth while?"
"What do you mean?"
"Why, that it's worth losing all those things that I may get the one big thing I want. Döan't you see that Boarzell and Odiam are worth more to me than wife or family or than you, Alice. Come to that, you've got none o' them things either, and you haven't a farm to mäake up fur it. So even if I wur sorry fur wot I'm not sorry fur, I'm still happier than you."
"No you aren't—because you want a thing, and I want nothing."