Free This Proud Heart by Pearl S. Buck Page B

now,” he said. “When I came home there was only one big one over the woods. Come on out for one more night. Winter will be here soon enough.” And then he said, “Do you think you could tell me anything that would hurt me?” And she said, kneeling before him, looking into his face, dim in the starlight, “I can hurt you more than anyone else, and you can hurt me as no one can, because we love each other.” He stared back at her, and she could not see his eyes, but only the planes of his cheek and his chin and forehead, his dark brows, the line of his nose and his mouth.
    “What is it?” he asked.
    “Will you promise?”
    “You can’t hurt me because I know you.”
    “Ah, promise!”
    “All right, but I don’t have to—Come here and sit on my knee.”
    So she sat on his knee and felt his arm strongly around her.
    “Mark, I thought over last night—and I still feel I want to do my share—do what I can, that is—and I thought of my modeling, so I went to see Mrs. Fontane, and luckily she had some friends there and they gave me two jobs.”
    “Here—sit up a minute,” he said. “I want to light my pipe.”
    “The Cupid really looks lovely, Mark,” she said, sitting upright. The match flared out, he drew hard once or twice, and pulled her back.
    “Well?” he said.
    “I’m to do a head for one of them, and a fountain for another.”
    “Summer people?” he asked.
    “Yes,” she said.
    “How much?”
    “Mark—please don’t mind—seven hundred.”
    “Seven hundred!” he cried. “Why, Sue—”
    She put her hand on his mouth. “Don’t say it—it doesn’t matter. Oh, Mark, let me please make a nursery out of the back bedroom and get a really good carriage and a crib! Why not, if I can?”
    He pressed her hand against his lips, kissed it, and took it away and put his pipe in his mouth. She leaned back, her heart lightened. He was not going to be angry. Why had she thought it would be hard?
    “This rather brings something to a head that’s been in my own mind, Sue,” he said. He knocked the ash out of his pipe and put it down carefully on the porch.
    “You promised you wouldn’t mind,” she said quickly.
    “It’s not a case of minding,” he said, “it’s a case of what’s fair to you, darling Sue. I want to be fair to you and I don’t know how.”
    “Only stay as you are to me, Mark,” she begged him. “I love our life.”
    But he seemed not to hear her. He had his arms about her tightly.
    “I want you to do what you want,” he said in a whisper. “Go on and fix up your attic. That’s what you really want to do. I’ve seen it all along.”
    She sat up, struggling out of his arms.
    “But I don’t want to fix up the attic,” she said, astonished. “I want the things for the baby, not for myself. I don’t know what you mean.”
    “Now you are hurt—it’s you who’s hurt!” he cried. “But all I want to say is I don’t want you to think that because you’ve married me that you can’t do what you want. I mean, if you have things you want to do, things I don’t know how to do, go on and do them.”
    “Why, Mark—” she began, and stopped.
    “I don’t feel I’m satisfying you,” he murmured, his voice miserable.
    “Oh, darling, darling, darling!” she cried, and reached for him in the darkness.
    “I know you’re different,” he muttered into her breast, “I’ve always known you were different. What right have I—”
    “Hush,” she whispered, “don’t—it’s like sending me away to say such things. I’ll never touch my hand to clay again or to a brush.”
    “Yes, you will!” He lifted his head. “Now, see here, Sue—that’s not fair. I’ve just been telling you—”
    “You’ve been saying one thing and feeling another. You’re hurt to the bone about something, but I don’t know what it is. I’ve got to find out what it is and stop doing it. Is it the money?”
    “No,” he said hotly. She was standing beside him now, her hand on