The sunset struck slantwise across her
cheek and hung entangled in the brown tress that drooped low by her
right temple. I tell you, Roddy, that if the old gods and goddesses
in our school-books ever turned out to be mortal after all, she was
one, and thus looked, and spoke as she died. . . .
"'I understand well enough,' she went on, 'the small things over
which women quarrel. . . . Though they all seem very far away just
now, I was a woman and could be jealous over _any of them_. But I
never understood why _men_ quarrelled, except for me, of course.
. . . Was it over your work, do you tell me?'
"'Surely,' said I, 'a man's work--'
"'Yes. I know that it is so,' she answered me with a small sigh.
'Do you know that, far back, I come down from the Incas? and I dare
say they thought less of work than of other things. . . . It is all
thanks to your working that we three are alive, now. . . . I
understand a little why men so much value their work. . . . But yet I
do not understand why they drop their work to quarrel as they do.
I understand it no better than the fighting of dogs.
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