"Oh, I don't know. I never did. Even when he was in the wrong, if he was fixed, I gave in. You see I never wanted to break what was between us. And if you really set your will against a man, that finishes it. If you care for a man, you have to give in to him once he's really determined; whether you're in the right or not, you have to give in. Else you break something. But I must say, Ted 'ud give in to me sometimes, when I was set on a thing, and in the wrong. So I suppose it cuts both ways."
"And that's how you are with all your patients?" asked Connie.
"Oh, that's different. I don't care at all, in the same way. I know what's good for them, or I try to, and then I just contrive to manage them for their own good. It's not like anybody as you're really fond of. It's quite different. Once you've been really fond of a man, you can be affectionate to almost any man, if he needs you at all. But it's not the same thing. You don't really care. I doubt, once you've really cared, if you can ever really care again."
These words frightened Connie.
"Do you think one can only care once?" she asked.
"Or never. Most women never care, never begin to. They don't know what it means. Nor men either. But when I see a woman as cares, my heart stands still for her."
"And do you think men easily take offence?"
"Yes! If you wound them on their pride. But aren't women the same? Only our two prides are a bit different."
Connie pondered this. She began again to have some misgiving about her going away. After all, was she not giving the man the go-by, if only for a short time? And he knew it. That's why he was so queer and sarcastic.
Still! the human existence is a good deal controlled by the machine of external circumstance, She was in the power of this machine. She couldn't extricate herself all in five minutes. She didn't even want to.
Hilda arrived in good time on Thursday morning, in a nimble two-seater car, with her suitcase strapped firmly behind. She looked as demure and maidenly as ever, but she had the same will of her own. She had the very hell of a will of her own, as her husband had found out. But the husband was now divorcing her. Yes, she even made it easy for him to do that, though she had no lover, For the time being, she was "off" men. She was very well content
