Page:Willa Cather - The Song of the Lark.djvu/476

 black choppiness on which the snowflakes fell and disappeared with magical rapidity. Her face was both angry and troubled. "So you really feel I 've been ungrateful. I thought you sent me out to get something. I did n't know you wanted me to bring in something easy. I thought you wanted something—" She took a deep breath and shrugged her shoulders. "But there! nobody on God's earth wants it, really! If one other person wanted it,"—she thrust her hand out before him and clenched it,—"my God, what I could do!"

Fred laughed dismally. "Even in my ashes I feel myself pushing you! How can anybody help it? My dear girl, can't you see that anybody else who wanted it as you do would be your rival, your deadliest danger? Can't you see that it 's your great good fortune that other people can't care about it so much?"

But Thea seemed not to take in his protest at all. She went on vindicating herself. "It 's taken me a long while to do anything, of course, and I 've only begun to see daylight. But anything good is—expensive. It has n't seemed long. I 've always felt responsible to you."

Fred looked at her face intently, through the veil of snowflakes, and shook his head. "To me? You are a truthful woman, and you don't mean to lie to me. But after the one responsibility you do feel, I doubt if you 've enough left to feel responsible to God! Still, if you 've ever in an idle hour fooled yourself with thinking I had anything to do with.it, Heaven knows I 'm grateful."

"Even if I 'd married Nordquist," Thea went on, turning down the path again, "there would have been something left out. There always is. In a way, I 've always been married to you. I 'm not very flexible; never was and never shall be. You caught me young. I could never have that over again. One can't, after one begins to know anything. But I look back on it. My life has n't been a gay one, any more than yours. If I shut things out from you, you shut