Then with a sarcasm and lack of tact which she had never
shown before, she gave voice to her general dissatisfaction.
"_Really, Austin_, don't come near me, please; you're altogether too
_barny_. Don't you think you're carrying your devotion to the nobility of
labor a little too far, and your devotion to me--if you still have
any--not quite far enough? You're slipping straight back to your old
slovenly, disagreeable ways--without the excuse that you formerly had
that they were practically the only ways open to you. If you're too proud
to accept my money and the freedom that it can give you, and so stubborn
that you make a scene and then won't come near me for days because I
refuse to go to a cheap little public dance with you--"
She got no farther. Austin interrupted her with a violence of which she
would not have believed him capable.
"_If_! If you're too stubborn to go with me to my sister's _graduation
ball_, and too proud to accept the fact that I'm a _farmer_, with a
farmer's friends and family and work, and that _I'm damned glad of it_,
and won't give them up, or be supported by any woman on the face of the
earth, or let her make a pet lap-dog of me, you can go straight back to
the life you came from, for all me! You seem to prefer it, after all, and
I believe it's all you deserve.
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