Nor did she turn to look at
Durrance when she had done.
"So she has lost everything?" said Durrance.
"She still has a home in Donegal," returned Mrs. Adair.
"And that means a great deal to her," said Durrance, slowly. "Yes, I
think you are right."
"It means," said Mrs. Adair, "that Ethne with all her ill-luck has
reason to be envied by many other women."
Durrance did not answer that suggestion directly. He watched the
carriages drive past, he listened to the chatter and the laughter of the
people about him, his eyes were refreshed by the women in their
light-coloured frocks; and all the time his slow mind was working toward
the lame expression of his philosophy. Mrs. Adair turned to him with a
slight impatience in the end.
"Of what are you thinking?" she asked.
"That women suffer much more than men when the world goes wrong with
them," he answered, and the answer was rather a question than a definite
assertion. "I know very little, of course. I can only guess. But I think
women gather up into themselves what they have been through much more
than we do. To them what is past becomes a real part of them, as much a
part of them as a limb; to us it's always something external, at the
best the rung of a ladder, at the worst a weight on the heel.
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