"No, they're not; they're kind, rather too kind. I mean they make you feel it's a moral obligation to treat such an outsider humanely. Of course they can't help it, and it's nasty of me to mention it, but I can't help feeling it, either, and it makes me mad. Everything does down there, from morning prayers, with half a squadron of bluey-white servants on red chairs, to the candles at ten o'clock, and to bed with what appetite you mayn't. And I've _got_ to do it! If I suggest anything fresh and sensible they look at me as if I were a sort of missing link. So I shut up and scream inside me and wish for something to bite. Put your hand here."
He smiled at the sudden change, but laid his hand on the arm of her seat, and she closed her gloved fingers over it.
There was a breadth in his tone which comforted her.
"Yes, I did; perhaps _I_ was the fool; but I didn't say 'for three months.'"
A certain sharpness in her registry seemed to give it claims to be considered calendar. South looked up at her quickly, and she flushed scarlet.
"Well, five," he said; "hardly time for a very exhaustive study of the married state."
"Oh, it's not the married state," she explained, slowly, looking out over the square. "I shouldn't mind being married--married to a man. I'm married to a house."
"I dare say it is; but I'm not a snail, and can't stand having it on my back;' I wasn't born under family bricks."
She turned her head and flashed a shy glance across his eyes.
She looked away as she said it, and he did not immediately reply. Presently she loosened her fingers from his, and laid her hand in her lap. She broke the silence sharply.
"I don't understand you," she said; "why do you suppose I've come here, ever? Do you fancy it's for the pleasure of a little talk? Why, I've gone home sometimes clinching my hands to keep from crying, and hating you fit to kill you."
"Yes, I have! It's horrid of me, I know, because you've tried to be kind, mostly; but being kind is worse than anything, sometimes."
She turned toward him, and through the shadow upon her face her eyes glowed molten, as lead grows red in the ladle.
"Well," he said, "you may forgive me; I haven't tried to be kind. I thought all the kindness on the other side. Your very coming was a concession."