Then she cried: "I have said you were only fourteen--you are only FOUR!" He still dug at the earth viciously.

He heard.
"You are a child of four," she repeated in her anger.
He did not answer, but said in his heart: "All right; if I'm a child of four, what do you want me for?
I don't want another mother." But he said nothing to her, and there was silence.
"And have you told your people ?" she asked.
"I have told my mother." There was another long interval of silence.
"Then what do you WANT ?" she asked.
"Why, I want us to separate.

We have lived on each other all these years; now let us stop.

I will go my own way without you, and you will go your way without me.

You will have an independent life of your own then." There was in it some truth that, in spite of her bitterness, she could not help registering.