There's not a pretty slight you ever put upon me, nor a pretty trick you
ever played me, nor a pretty insolence you ever showed me, that I won't
pay back a hundred-fold. What else did I marry you for? YOU, too!' he
said, with coarse contempt.
It might have softened him--indeed it might--to hear her turn a little
fragment of a song he used to say he liked; trying, with a heart so
full, to win him back.
'Oho!' he said, 'you're deaf, are you? You don't hear me, eh? So much
the better for you. I hate you. I hate myself, for having, been fool
enough to strap a pack upon my back for the pleasure of treading on it
whenever I choose. Why, things have opened to me, now, so that I might
marry almost where I liked. But I wouldn't; I'd keep single. I ought to
be single, among the friends I know. Instead of that, here I am, tied
like a log to you. Pah! Why do you show your pale face when I come home?
Am I never to forget you?'
'How late it is!' she said cheerfully, opening the shutter after an
interval of silence. 'Broad day, Jonas!'
'Broad day or black night, what do I care!' was the kind rejoinder.
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