They're nothing but a lot of
half-naked women cavorting and singing fast songs. And the show only
begins--with most of them--when the curtain drops. If I even try to
think of you in that I get sick."
"Go on," Hannah stammered, scarcely above her breath.
"It's bad," Calvin Stammark went on. "The women are bad; and a bad
woman is something awful. I know about that too. I've been to the city
as well as Phebe. Oh, Hannah," he cried, "can't you see, can't you!"
With a violent effort he regained the greater part of his composure.
"But it won't touch you," he added; "we're going to be married right
away."
"We are?" Hannah echoed him thinly, in bitter mockery. "I wouldn't have
you now if you were the last man on earth with the way you talked
about Phebe! I don't see how you can stand there and look at me. If I
told pa or Hosmer they would shoot you. You might as well know this as
well--I'm going back with her; it'll be some gayer than these lonely
old valleys or your house stuck away all by itself with nothing to see
but Senator Alderwith's steers."
There flashed into Calvin Stammark's mind the memory of how he had
planned to possess just such cattle for Hannah and himself; he saw in
the elusive lamplight the house he had built for Hannah. His feeling,
that a second before had been so acute, was numb. This, he thought, was
strange; a voice within echoed that he was going to lose her, to lose
Hannah; but he had no faculty capable of understanding such a calamity.
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