"I wanted to travel with him alone--I planned a honeymoon in the desert, and we had it--and I planned after that to sail the seas to the land of Nowhere--and we sailed--and then--I wanted to go to the high plains--and ride and camp--and into the forests to hunt and fish--but he wouldn't. He said that we had wandered enough. He wanted to build a house--and have me warm--his slippers--"
"We quarreled--great hot heavy quarrels--and we said things--horrid things--that we can't forgive--"
She was sobbing on my shoulder and I said softly: "Things that _you_ can't forgive?"
"Yes. And that _he_ can't. That's why I ran away from him."
"I couldn't stand it to see him going around with his face stern and set and not like my lover's. And he didn't speak to me except to be polite. And he asked people to go with us--everywhere. And we were never alone--"
"What had you said to make him--like that?"
She raised her head. "I told him that I--hated him--"
"It was a dreadful thing to say, wasn't it? That's why I ran away. I couldn't stand it. I knew it was a thing no man--could--forgive--"
I smoothed her hair and rocked her back and forth while she cried. It was strange how much of a child she seemed to me. And I was only the wife of a country grocer and lived over the store, and she was the wife of a man whose name was known from east to west, and all around the world. But you see she hadn't learned to live. Neither have I, really. But Billy has taught me a lot.
I think it was a comfort for her to feel that she had confided in me. But she made me promise that whatever happened I wouldn't let him know.
"Unless I--die," she said, and she was as white as a lily, "unless I die, and then you can--set him--free--"
Billy was sorry that I had promised. "Somehow I feel responsible, sweetheart, and I'll bet her poor husband is almost crazy."
He caught me to him so quickly that he almost shook the breath out of me. "Don't ask a thing like that," he said, and his voice didn't sound like his own. "If anything should happen to you--if anything should happen--I should--I should--oh, why will women ask things like that--?"
In the days that followed, Billy didn't want me out of his sight. He even hated to have me go up to the Davenant house with William Watters. "Take care of her, William," he would say, and stand looking after us.