“Like it!” The uttermost of scorn was in her voice. “I hate, hate, hate it! I just live to get out into the great world, where I feel that I belong. But I must have money first. And I’m going to study, and I’m going to make myself somebody. I wasn’t born for this.” And she waved her hand with a sweep that took in all the backwoods world. “I’m getting out of it. It would drive me mad. Oh, I sometimes think it has already driven me half mad.”
Her tense voice trailed off wearily, and she sat down again—this time further away.
Blackstock sat quite still for a time. At last he said gently:
“I do understand ye now, Mary.”
“You don’t,” interrupted Mary.
“I felt, all along, I was somehow not good enough for you.”
“You’re a million miles too good for me,” she interrupted again, energetically.
“But,” he went on without heeding the protest, “I hoped, somehow, that I might be able to make you happy. An’ that’s what I want, more’n anything else in the world. All I have is at your feet, Mary, an’ I could make it more in time. But I’m not a big enough man for you. I’m all yours—an’ always will be—but I can’t make myself no more than I am.”
“Yes, you could, Tug Blackstock,” she cried. “Real men are scarce, in the great world and everywhere. You could make yourself a master anywhere—if only you would tear yourself loose from here.”
He sprang up, and his arms went out as if to seize her. But, with an effort, he checked himself, and dropped them stiffly to his side.