“I was born out of season, in the Summer Fallow,”
“We can’t help it, it’s how we are.” He laughed again, looking at her, but she was very serious now. “I was born out of season, in the Summer Fallow,” she said. “It does happen with us, but very rarely; and you see—when Winter’s over I’ll be too old to bear a Spring child. I’ll never have a son. Some old man will take me for a fifth wife one of these days, but the Winter Fallow has begun, and come Spring I’ll be old.… So I will die barren. It’s better for a woman not to be born at all than to be born out of season as I was.… And another thing, it is true what they say, that a farborn man takes only one wife?”
