Page:Frank Owen - Woman Without Love (1949 reprint).djvu/62

 than I am. That good woman must go back into her cell. If she exists, escape is impossible. Her cell must be guarded. She must never break free."

of Steve Garland the farm was more lonesome than ever, or so it seemed to Mary Blaine. It was almost uncanny. Frequently as she went about her work she imagined she could hear the echo of Steve's laughter. She could not get him out of her thoughts. Although he was dead, in her memory he still lived.

Often she sat moodily on the veranda gazing off into space. In her own fashion she mourned for him. It was an alien sensation. She had never mourned for any man before. As far as she was concerned they were all dead when they left her arms. But Steve Garland was different. He had been on the fringe of death when she met him. Yet now he seemed more alive than even Yekial Meigs.

Yekial noticed her brooding and became angry.

"Have you nothing better to do," he demanded, "than to sit about moping?"

"You tend to your affairs," she sneered, "and I'll tend to mine. Where is the gallant gentleman I met at the World's Fair? Was your attitude then merely a mask which you had borrowed for the occasion?"

The question confused him. "We can't always be playing," he said uncomfortably.

"No?" she asked innocently. "And why not? Why can't we always play? What is there so all important about work? It seems to me that half our lives is given to useless toil and most of the remainder is devoted to sham and pomp. Man lives only about two per cent of his life."

"Who are you quoting?" he asked irritably. "That Garland fellow?"