1 "Don't let's talk that way," he whispered.
2 "Well, I'd like to talk to you about it," said Zeena obstinately.
3 All constraint had vanished between the two, and they began to talk easily and simply.
4 Watching Mattie whirl down the floor from hand to hand he wondered how he could ever have thought that his dull talk interested her.
5 He became suddenly conscious that he was looking at Mattie while Zeena talked to him, and with an effort he turned his eyes to his wife.
6 He kept his eyes fixed on her, marvelling at the way her face changed with each turn of their talk, like a wheat-field under a summer breeze.
7 The mere fact of obeying her orders, of feeling free to go about his business again and talk with other men, restored his shaken balance and magnified his sense of what he owed her.
8 When she spoke it was only to complain, and to complain of things not in his power to remedy; and to check a tendency to impatient retort he had first formed the habit of not answering her, and finally of thinking of other things while she talked.
9 For the first time they would be alone together indoors, and they would sit there, one on each side of the stove, like a married couple, he in his stocking feet and smoking his pipe, she laughing and talking in that funny way she had, which was always as new to him as if he had never heard her before.