ve always got it over to me that you loved me or
could love me--"

"I've always loved you, Martin--deeply."

"Yes, that's what's always made me so hard with you. It would have been
far better for you if you hadn't cared for me at all. I've never loved
anybody, not even my own mother, nor Bill, nor myself for that matter."
Their eyes shifted away from each other quickly as both thought of one
other whom he did not mention. "I wasn't made that way, Rose. Now you
could love anything--lots of women are like that, and men, too. But I
wasn't. Life to me has always been a strange world that I never got over
thinking about and trying to understand, and at the same time hustling
to get through with every day of it as fast as I could by keeping at the
only thing I knew which would make it all more bearable. There's a lot
of pain in work, but it's only of the muscles and my pain has always
been in the things I've thought about. The awful waste and futility of
it all! Take this farm--I came here when this was hardly more than a
desert. You ought to have seen how thick the dust was the first day
we got down here. And I've built up this place. You've helped me. Bill
didn't care for it--even if he had lived, he'd never have stayed here.
But you do, in spite of all that's happened."

"Yes, Martin, I do," she returned fervently. "It's a wonderful monument
to leave behind you--this farm is."

His eyes grew somber. "That's what I've always thought it would be," he
answered, very low. "I've felt as if I was building something that would
last. Even the barns--they're ready to stand for generations. But this
minute, when the end is sitting at the foot of this bed, I seem to see
it all crumbling before me. You won't stay here. Why should you--even
if you do for a few years you'll have to leave it sometime, and there's
nothing that goes to rack and ruin as quickly as a farm--even one like
this."

"Oh, Martin, don't think such thoughts," she begged. "Your fever is
coming up; I can see it."

"What has it all been about, that's what I want to know," he went on
with quiet cynicism. "What have I been sweating about--nothing. What
is anyone's life? No more than mine. We're all like a lot of hens in a
backyard, scratching so many hours a day. Some scratch a little deeper
than those who aren't so skilled or so strong. And when I stand off
a little, it's all alike. The end is as blind and senseless as the
beginning on this farm--drought and dust