“I know what you are, Marpasse. They were ready to whip me; I had no pity.”
Marpasse set her teeth.
“This life, the devil pity you! For me, yes, but you! I have a brazen face, a conscience like leather, and talons that can tear. But you! Bah, you would kill yourself in a month.”
She thrust Denise away from her, as though thrusting her from some influence that was dangerous and to be feared. Denise did not resist her, but sat hanging her head, mute and obstinate, her eyes sweeping up now and again to the face of the woman beside her.
“I am weary of it all,” she said, “they made the soul sick and bitter in me.”
Marpasse sat with her chin on her fists, her forehead one great frown.
“Ssh, and you thought of me, and the road! Am I such a damned witch as that!”
“You do not curse, and preach.”
Marpasse turned on her with sudden, fierce sincerity.
“Yes, I do not preach, because I am down in the ditch, but I know what the mud is like, and I do not want you with me. Bah, let me think. What shall I tell you, that you had better be as dead as the black boar there, before you take to the road.”