Marie looked at him steadily.  Just as she wanted to scream at him in the night, so she now longed to cry:  “It’s harder on me than you!  Do you think I don’t want ever to go out?  Do you think I don’t often long to go into the West End and look at the shops, or do a matinee with mother or Julia, and come back refreshed?”

But with the prudence of her mother’s daughter she restrained herself.

“Day in, day out, are we always to live the life domestic pure and simple?” Osborn demanded.

For answer she shrugged her shoulders.  Osborn thought her strangely nonchalant, almost contemptuous.

“Well, I, for one, damned well won’t do it,” he said, rising from the table.

“But I must,” Marie replied in a level voice.

It was Osborn’s turn to look at her; he wondered just what she meant by it.

“Well,” he asked, “I can’t help it, can I?”

“Neither can I,” said Marie.

Osborn put on his coat and hat and went out.  It was the first time he had ever gone out after dinner at home.  For some while after he had left Marie remained alone at the table, staring before her.  The small dining-room was still charming in the candlelight, but it took on a new aspect for her.  The cream walls and golden-brown curtains enclosed her irrevocably.  She would never get away from this place, the prison of home.  Day in, day out, as Osborn said, it would be the same.  The man might come and go at will, the woman had forged her fetters.

Didn’t men ever understand anything?  What crass vanity, what selfishness, what intolerance, kept them blind?

Marie was hardening.  She did not cry.  After a while she rose and cleared the table.  As Osborn was not there, wishing for her company, she washed up.  That would make it so much easier in the morning.

It left her, though, with an hour now in which to sit down and resume her thinking.

The flat was very quiet, very desolate.  The man had gone out to seek amusement.  How queer women’s lives were!

She knew women whose husbands invariably went out at night, as soon as they had fed.  What did these women really think of their men?  What did these men really think of their women?  How much did each know of the other?  At what stage in these varied married lives did the wife become merely a servitor, to serve or order the serving of her husband’s dinner, for which he came home before, again, he left her?

Married life!

At nine-thirty Marie prepared the baby’s bottle and went to bed.  She schooled herself to sleep, knowing that during the night the baby would make his demands, and she fell asleep quickly.  She did not hear Osborn come in.  He looked about the flat for her before going to his dressing-room, and, not finding her, said to himself wilfully:  “Marie’s sulking; she wouldn’t wait up.  Does she always expect a fellow to stay at home?”

By the glim of the nightlight, when he went into their room he saw her sleeping.  The child slept, too.  Osborn got resentfully into his bed, and thought of Rokeby, with whom he had just parted, and the end of a conversation they had had.