“Instalment plan!” he barked.  “I’m sick of instalments!  When am I ever going to be free?  When’s my money ever going to be my own again?  Tell me that!”

“I can’t tell you anything,” said Marie, beginning to cry.

“Tears again!” he groaned.  “Always this blasted tap-turning if you ask a woman a lucid question!  Don’t you see what you’re making life for me?  Don’t you see the eternal drag you’re putting on my wheel?  I never drink, I never play cards, I don’t do what any other fellow under the sun would expect to do; I give you all I can—­every penny’s gone in this awful domesticity.  Domesticity?  Slavery, I call it!  What more can I do?  What more do you expect?  You ask for a perambulator as if it were a sixpenny-ha’penny toy!  What would a perambulator cost?”

She retained control enough to reply: 

“I—­I have a catalogue.  The one I’ve marked—­I’d thought of—­is—­is three pounds ten.”

Osborn threw away restraint.

“Three pounds ten!” he cried.  “Within ten bob of a week’s salary!  Do you realise what you’re asking?  My God, women have a cheek.  You bleed a man and bleed him until—­until he don’t know where to turn.  It’s ask, ask, ask—­”

Then Marie also flung off restraint and gave all her pent-up nerves play.  They faced each other like furies, he red and grim, she shaken and shrill.

“Ask, ask, ask!  And what has marriage ever given me?  Look at me!  I was happy till I married you!  I never knew what it was to be so poor and—­and grudged till I’d married you!  I didn’t know what marriage was.  I didn’t know I’d be hungry and worried—­yes, hungry!—­and made ashamed to ask for every penny that I couldn’t get without asking.  Why can’t I get it?  Why, because you took me away from my job and married me!  I cook for you, and sew and sweep and dust for you, and you take it all as a matter of course.  All I’ve given up for you you take as a matter of course!

“All I’ve suffered for you you take as a matter of course ... you men!”

“I didn’t know what it’d be like to have a baby, or, God knows, I’d never have had one—­”

“Be quiet!” shouted Osborn.  “Be quiet!”

But she raved on: 

“No, I wouldn’t!  I wouldn’t, I tell you!  What do you expect of women?  You expect us to want babies and bear them in all that—­hell, and be pleased to have them; and—­and to put up with begging from you for them!  And you don’t care how weak we are—­how our backs ache; you don’t care if the baby goes out or stays in—­if I go out or stay in.  It’s your child, isn’t it?  It’s not all my fault we had it, is it?  There’s a lucid question for you!  Answer it!”

“I will do no such thing!” he cried angrily.  “You ought to be ashamed of yourself—­a woman—­a woman suggesting she doesn’t want a baby!”

“I didn’t say it!  I suggest I don’t want one of yours!”

“My God!” said Osborn, recoiling.