“But what’s the idea?  What are you trying to get at?  Mean to say I’m unreasonable?  Think I’m so unreliable and tightwad that you’ve got to tie me down with a contract?  By God, that hurts!  I thought I’d been pretty generous and decent, and I took a lot of pleasure—­thinks I, ’she’ll be tickled when I hand her over this twenty’—­or fifty, or whatever it was; and now seems you been wanting to make it a kind of alimony.  Me, like a poor fool, thinking I was liberal all the while, and you——­”

“Please stop pitying yourself!  You’re having a beautiful time feeling injured.  I admit all you say.  Certainly.  You’ve given me money both freely and amiably.  Quite as if I were your mistress!”

“Carrie!”

“I mean it!  What was a magnificent spectacle of generosity to you was humiliation to me.  You gave me money—­gave it to your mistress, if she was complaisant, and then you——­”

“Carrie!”

“(Don’t interrupt me!)—­then you felt you’d discharged all obligation.  Well, hereafter I’ll refuse your money, as a gift.  Either I’m your partner, in charge of the household department of our business, with a regular budget for it, or else I’m nothing.  If I’m to be a mistress, I shall choose my lovers.  Oh, I hate it—­I hate it—­this smirking and hoping for money—­and then not even spending it on jewels as a mistress has a right to, but spending it on double-boilers and socks for you!  Yes indeed!  You’re generous!  You give me a dollar, right out—­the only proviso is that I must spend it on a tie for you!  And you give it when and as you wish.  How can I be anything but uneconomical?”

“Oh well, of course, looking at it that way——­”

“I can’t shop around, can’t buy in large quantities, have to stick to stores where I have a charge account, good deal of the time, can’t plan because I don’t know how much money I can depend on.  That’s what I pay for your charming sentimentalities about giving so generously.  You make me——­”

“Wait!  Wait!  You know you’re exaggerating.  You never thought about that mistress stuff till just this minute!  Matter of fact, you never have ‘smirked and hoped for money.’  But all the same, you may be right.  You ought to run the household as a business.  I’ll figure out a definite plan tomorrow, and hereafter you’ll be on a regular amount or percentage, with your own checking account.”

“Oh, that is decent of you!” She turned toward him, trying to be affectionate.  But his eyes were pink and unlovely in the flare of the match with which he lighted his dead and malodorous cigar.  His head drooped, and a ridge of flesh scattered with pale small bristles bulged out under his chin.

She sat in abeyance till he croaked: 

“No.  ’Tisn’t especially decent.  It’s just fair.  And God knows I want to be fair.  But I expect others to be fair, too.  And you’re so high and mighty about people.  Take Sam Clark; best soul that ever lived, honest and loyal and a damn good fellow——­”