Mildred Masterson McNeilly

“You want to mold things to fit your own purposes. You're selfish. You would not give-only take. You would never change; you're made of granite and steel, and a woman would wear herself out and break her heart, beating against that hardness of yours.”
― Mildred Masterson McNeilly, Each Bright River

“He had coldly and calculatingly looked at her as he regarded any attractive woman, and he had decided, almost without emotion, that she would make him an ideal wife...

Once that decision made, violent possessiveness followed. His desire for her had grown, stimulated by her own resistance and the barrier of respectability and convention which, for him, had been both new and tantalizing.

He had believed that she needed him, his strength and his protection, and he had been pleased and triumphant, but not surprised, when he had forced her to reveal that need, for he wanted her helpless and dependent upon him.

But now, lying there in the army camp...Curt realized his own need, his own complete, dependency upon her for happiness. He, like Oregon, rugged and violent, had to have the beauty and delicacy and fineness of a woman-and it had to be Kitty. That was the strange thing about it, he considered; the realization, for the first time in his life, that one woman, and only one, would do.”
― Mildred Masterson McNeilly, Each Bright River