'For me, a good deal more.'
'Then it will be for me, probably. Go on, and explain.'
'No, perhaps not for you. You might be perfectly content with the flower, as you call it, in your hand; content with your content; looking no further.'
'You are mistaken,' said Dane, with a manner both amused and pleased.'I should never be content with my content.'
'But I mean' She was not very willing to tell her meaning, the words came slowly,'I used to think, that being so much to him, she must needs be something in herself. That only one who was a glory in herself, could be the glory of another. In my way'Hazel added, dropping her voice, ' "She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life." And he will be "known in the gates" by more than the robe of purple and silk which her hands have woven!'
As far as the face could then, it went down, bending over the nuts.
Dane looked, and smiled, and took no advantage.
'I do not see the difference of your view from mine,' he remarked quietly. 'You credit me surely with so much discrimination as to perceive that some women are nobody's glory,even as some men are fit to be nobody's head.'
'But people do not think so,' said Hazel. 'People make it out to be just something supplemental,a sort of convenient finishing up the few trifles of comfort or help wherein a man may be deficient. That is what they all say.It is a very queer thing to be a woman!'
'Is it?' said Dane gravely.
'Yes!' said Hazel with one of her outbursts.'Prim tells me not to vex you, and Dr. Maryland wants to know ifif I shall be a help or a hindrance, in short; and he hopes you will not let me have my own way too much. Nobody enquires if you are likely to vex me, or to try my temper, or to develope my character, or help on my work; nobody supposes that I have any work, of my own. But if I have not, that is only the more queer.'