Sinclair Lewis: Main Street

29. CHAPTER XXIX (continued)

He looked at her reverently. She could hear him saying,

"I've always wanted to know a woman who would talk to me like that."

Her hearing was faulty. He was saying nothing of the sort. He was saying:

"Why aren't you happy with your husband?"

"I--you----"

"He doesn't care for the `blessed innocent' part of you, does he!"

"Erik, you mustn't----"

"First you tell me to go and be free, and then you say that I `mustn't'!"

"I know. But you mustn't---- You must be more impersonal!"

He glowered at her like a downy young owl. She wasn't sure but she thought that he muttered, "I'm damned if I will." She considered with wholesome fear the perils of meddling with other people's destinies, and she said timidly, "Hadn't we better start back now?"

He mused, "You're younger than I am. Your lips are for songs about rivers in the morning and lakes at twilight. I don't see how anybody could ever hurt you. . . . Yes. We better go."

He trudged beside her, his eyes averted. Hugh experimentally took his thumb. He looked down at the baby seriously. He burst out, "All right. I'll do it. I'll stay here one year. Save. Not spend so much money on clothes. And then I'll go East, to art-school. Work on the side-tailor shop, dressmaker's. I'll learn what I'm good for: designing clothes, stage-settings, illustrating, or selling collars to fat men. All settled." He peered at her, unsmiling.

"Can you stand it here in town for a year?"

"With you to look at?"