As for her, she was going over the whole situation from this new
standpoint. He had been weak, he had fallen in her estimation, and
yet, as he stood there, so boyish in his exultation, the father of her
children, she loved him with a touch of maternal tenderness and
hope, and her heart throbbed in an unconscious, swift
determination to do him good. She no longer deceived herself. She
was his equal-in some ways his superior. Her love had friendship
in it, but less of sex, and no adoration.
As she blew out the lights, stepped out on the walk, and turned the
key in the lock, he said, "Well, Nellie, you won't have to do that
any more."
"No; I won't have to, but I guess I'll keep on just the same, Jim."
"Keep on? What for?"
"Well, I rather like it."
"But you don't need to-"
"I like being my own boss," she said. "I've done a lot o' figuring,
Jim, these last three years, and it's kind o' broadened me, I hope. I
can't go back where I was. I'm a better woman than I was before,
and I hope and believe that I'm better able to be a real mother to
my children." Jim looked up at the moon filling the warm, moist
air with a transfiguring light that fell in a luminous mist on the
distant hills.
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