"Come;
let's walk."
He fell in beside her and they tramped sturdily along for a while in
silence. At last she said, "Can you tell me why? Suppose there hadn't
been any one else with me; suppose I'd felt toward you the way you did
toward me, then; why couldn't you have gone on being my friend and
partner as well as my lover? You'd have known I was worth it; have known
I understood the things you were interested in and--yes, and was able to
help you to work them out. Why would all that have had to go?"
"Oh, I don't know that I can explain it," he said. "But I don't think
I'd call it a blunder that a strip of spring steel can't bend in your
fingers like copper and still go on being a spring. You see, a man
wants his work and then he wants something that isn't his work; that's
altogether apart from his work; doesn't remind him of it. Love's about
as far away as anything he can get. So that the notion of our working
ourselves half to death over the same job, and then going home
together .
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