“It’s terrible, once you’ve got a man into your blood!” she said.
“Oh, my Lady! And that’s what makes you feel so bitter. You feel folks wanted him killed. You feel the pit fair wanted to kill him. Oh, I felt, if it hadn’t been for the pit, an’ them as runs the pit, there’d have been no leaving me. But they all want to separate a woman and a man, if they’re together.”
“If they’re physically together,” said Connie.
“That’s right my Lady! There’s a lot of hardhearted folks in the world. And every morning when he got up and went to th’ pit, I felt it was wrong, wrong. But what else could he do? What can a man do?”
A queer hate flared in the woman.
“But can a touch last so long?” Connie asked suddenly. “That you could feel him so long?”
“Oh my Lady, what else is there to last? Children grows away from you. But the man, well—! But even that they’d like to kill in you, the very thought of the touch of him. Even your own children! Ah well! We might have drifted apart, who knows. But the feeling’s something different. It’s ’appen better never to care. But there, when I look at women who’s never really been warmed through by a man, well, they seem to me poor dool-owls after all, no matter how they may dress up and gad. No, I’ll abide by my own. I’ve not much respect for people.”