“Frank, Eddie brought me some letters from home—­from England, I mean—­to-day.  I’ve had an offer of a job back in England.”

He got up slowly and went over to the corner where the broom hung to get some straws to run through the mouthpiece of his pipe.  His face was turned from her, so that she could not see that he had closed his eyes for a moment and that his mouth was drawn with pain.

When he turned he had resumed his ordinary expression.  His voice was perfectly steady when he spoke: 

“An offer of a job?  Gee!  I guess you’ll jump at that.”

“It’s funny it should have come just when you had been talking of my going away.”

“Very.”

Not even a comment.  Oh, why didn’t he say that he would be glad to have her gone, and be done with it!  Anything, almost, would be easier to bear than this total lack of interest.  She tried another tack.

“Have you any—­any objection?”

“I guess it wouldn’t make a powerful lot of difference to you if I had.”  He could actually smile, his good-natured, indulgent smile, which she knew so well.

“What makes you think that?”

“Oh, I guess you only stayed on here because you had to.”

Nora’s work dropped in her lap.

“Is life always like that?” she said with bitter sadness.  “The things you’ve wanted so dreadfully seem only to bring you pain when they come.”

He gave her a swift glance, but went on smoking quietly.  She went over to the window again and stood looking out at the stretch of prairie.  Presently she spoke in a low voice, but her words were addressed as much to herself as to him: 

“Month after month, this winter, I used to sit here looking out at the prairie.  Sometimes I wanted to scream at the top of my voice.  I felt that I must break that awful silence or go mad.  There were times when the shack was like a prison.  I thought I should never escape.  I was hemmed in by the snow and the cold and the stillness; cut off from everything and everybody, from all that had been the world I knew.”

“Are you going to quit right now with Ed?” he asked gently.

Nora went slowly back to her chair.  “You seem in a great hurry to be rid of me,” she said, with the flicker of a smile.

“Well, I guess we ain’t made a great success of our married life, my girl.”  He went over to the stove to knock the ashes from his pipe.  “It’s rum, when you come to figure it out,” he said, when it was once more lighted; “I thought I could make you do everything I wanted, just because I was bigger and stronger.  It sure did look like I held a straight flush.  And you beat me.”

“I?” said Nora in astonishment.

“Why, sure.  You don’t mean to say you didn’t know that?”

“I don’t know at all what you mean.”

“I guess I was pretty ignorant about women,” his began pacing up and down the floor as he talked.  “I guess I didn’t know how strong a woman could be.  You was always givin’ way; you done everything I told you.  And, all the time, you was keeping something back from me that I couldn’t get at.  Whenever I thought I was goin’ to put my hand on you—­zip!  You was away again.  I guess I found I’d only caught hold of a shadow.”