“This exaggeration—­”

“Ah, it isn’t.  It sounds bad, but it isn’t so very.  It’s rather ordinary.  And, Osborn, do you remember when I had to ask you for money—?”

She looked at him freezingly.  “Do you think a woman who’s been begged and cajoled and petted into marrying a man enjoys creeping and crawling to him for odd shillings for household expenses?  Do men think we enjoy it or do it wilfully, that they grudge it so?  We can’t help it.”

“Where’s all this harangue—­”

“There’s more to it yet.  Do you know when you told me you were going away at once for a year, I thought I was broken?  I loved you so.  It seemed awful to see the gladness and relief in your face at leaving us, getting rid of us for a whole year!  I’d been watching you for so long, and seeing you change, and get irritated with it all, and trying to keep young for you when I was tired out.  And that night, when I saw how I’d failed, how dead your love was—­”

“No; it was never dead, Marie.”

“Wasn’t it?  Was it sleeping, then?  Where was it?  What was it doing?”

“You see—­”

“Oh, yes, I see.  I saw, then, how joyfully you shelved us all.  You were like a boy let out of school.  And I’d worked so hard to keep home happy for you, but you just thought of it as a place of bills and worry and children, presided over by a perpetual asker.  That night before you went, do you remember leaving me to mend your things?”

“Yes.”

“When you had gone, I cried, and prayed; it didn’t do any good.  I didn’t know women could suffer so—­even when the children were born—­”

Osborn sprang up.  “Don’t,” he said hurriedly, with visions of anguish in his mind.

“Very well.  I don’t want to harrow you.  I’m only just giving the explanation you asked.  A year ago you left me, glad to go, and I thought my heart would break.  But it didn’t.  And it’s changed.  You’ve come back—­to exact again all the things that husbands do exact.  But I don’t want you.”

She had appalled him.

He stammered hoarsely:  “I don’t understand—­I can’t see what you want us to do.”

“Well; to live—­apart.”

“You can’t mean it.”

“But I do.  How often am I to say, I don’t want you?  The last part of this year, after the pain was over, I’ve been as glad to be without you as during the first part of the year you were glad to be without me.  Isn’t that plain?”

“You’re making it horribly plain.  And now I’m going to ask you, could I help being poor and short of cash?”

She shook her head.  “No!  But I couldn’t either, and you were awfully down on me.”

“‘Down’ on you! I!”

“You grumbled persistently every day.  The kiddies and I just waited upon your moods.  And if I had to ask for anything, you weren’t kind about it; you just flung out of the place, leaving me all the worries.  You never helped nor shared.  I’ve come to this conclusion lately; that it simply isn’t worth while living with a person who grumbles persistently and has to be propitiated every day.”