Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/353

 "No?"

"Exaggerating an incident. O, you know what wicked rot the whole thing is. And do you think I am not keen on myself? I adore myself and my work and my ambition, and success and the money I make. It is the breath in my nostrils. And you want me to fold my wings"

"I don't."

"Demure wings—and think about dear little children. Little beasts! Can't you understand that I won't give up my liberty; I wouldn't, even if I cared."

"You don't care?"

"No."

There were pauses in the struggle, when both of them drew apart, a little out of breath, and she would not see him for a week, and when she had not seen him for seven days she would want to see him. Molly liked combat, the adventure of the thing, this passionate game with a man who was so very much in earnest. She had not said "Come hither"—and it was he who attacked, and so the responsibility of it was more his than hers. She had no thought of surrendering as Kit understood surrender, for the whole urge of her strong young nature was against the old time ties. She both loathed and despised them. Antiquated tyrannies and limitations!

She was free, and freedom is the most precious possession, the very crown of living, and Molly Pentreath had crowned herself. Moreover, she loved her work, her own particular job as much as Kit loved his. She expressed herself in it, just as the duller sort of woman expresses herself in her children. She had an audacity, an independence of mind that demanded a relationship that should leave her free, should she ever consent to give that part of herself to a man. It was not that she was cold. She had ardour, and also a fierce fastidiousness, but she refused to see in sex anything but an incident, and woman's fate had been to have this incident imposed upon her in the form of a permanent bondage. To Molly the idea of marriage as a career was so obsolete that Kit's wilful blindness to what was so obvious tended to make her impatient.

But his persistence and his staying power were equally obvious. He appeared to her as the born husband, a man capable of giving great happiness to a gentler type of