Robin Hood's Barn 



edged its girdling wall with a white stare. Could 

 she drive in? Much better not, unless she wished 

 to back the whole way out. So this then was my 

 entrance? How amusing. But was it healthy 

 to have the swamp right there beneath my nose? 

 Surely, too, I must find it living at close quar- 

 ters to have neighbors quite so near. And the 

 cottage ! In one second, she had taken in its size 

 and the brave errors of its taste. Still she had 

 no doubt that it was handy. By that, she meant 

 that I had not even had an eye for looks. And 

 of a sudden I saw my house only as she saw it, 

 small, hot, violently flushed, devoid of spacious- 

 ness and cool repose. 



Nor had I that high loyalty of silence that 

 meets criticism with contempt. I affected to dis- 

 claim my own. This affair of mine was, I pro- 

 tested, a free union, not a settled matter. I had 

 entered on it lightly; I had incurred no respon- 

 sibilities. When I felt myself growing weary, 

 there were no ties to keep me bound. 



No ties? Were places where birth and love 

 and death had written in their history, the only 

 ones that held ? Were human happenings all that 



[68] 



