They sat down and she began talking, boasting of herself as he had
boasted of his father.

"I'm too old for that boy," she said; "I'm older than you by a good
many years. I know what boys talk about and what they say about women.
I do pretty well. I don't have any one to talk to except father and he
sits all evening reading a paper and going to sleep in his chair. If I
let boys come and sit with me in the evening or stand talking with me
in the stairway it is because I'm lonesome. There isn't a man in town
I'd marry--not one."

The speech sounded discordant and harsh to Beaut. He wished his father
were there rubbing his hands together and muttering rather than this
pale woman who stirred him up and then talked harshly like the women
at the back doors in Coal Creek. He thought again as he had thought
before that he preferred the black-faced miners drunk and silent to
their pale talking wives. On an impulse he told her that, saying it
crudely so that it hurt.

Their companionship was spoiled. They got up and began to climb the
hill, going toward home. Again she put her hand to her side and again
he wished to put his hand at her back and push her up the hill.
Instead he walked beside her in silence, again hating the town.

Halfway down the hill the tall woman stopped by the road-side.
Darkness was coming on and the glow of the coke ovens lighted the sky.
"One living up here and never going down there might think it rather
grand and big," he said. Again the hatred came. "They might think the
men who live down there knew something instead of being just a lot of