his real-estate business.

He says he won't be chained by his business.

She reminds him that she has already explained he's perfectly free. But
she just wants to know how he wishes her to arrange in his absence.

[Illustration]

"Very well, then," he blazes out, "I will give up my plan: let it go!
let men go to the devil! I'm a prisoner, that's what it comes to. Like
all married men. There isn't a damn one of us that's allowed to do what
the world needs, or anything fine and unselfish."

She says that's unjust. She'd _love_ to have him be a great hero, and
she always has said so, but she doesn't see why he can't be one without
leaving his wife.

[Illustration: Pegged down]

Prometheus, with a groan at his bondage, walks out of the house, leaving
her feeling injured and wondering at the hardness of men. And he stamps
up and down the yard, working himself up into a state, and filling his
mind with dark pictures. Must every married man sit at home with his
wife in his arms, yearning for roving and achievement, but yearning in
vain? Pegged down, with a baby as a peg, and a mortgage as jailer. Must
every young fellow choose between a fiancee and adventure? Even when he
does choose adventure, they won't let him alone. There will always be
some girl at a window as he passes by, who will tempt him to stop and
play dolls with her, and stay indoors for keeps, and wrestle with a
mortgage for exercise, and give up the road. Prometheus swears. He tries
to imagine what our epics would be like if wives wrote them: what
heroes they'd sing. Tidy, amiable, hearthstone heroes, who'd always wind
up the clock regularly, and never invent dangerous airplanes or seek the
North Pole. Ulysses knitting sweaters by the fireside. George Washington
feeding canaries....

[Illustration]

Mrs. Prometheus sticks her head out of the window: "I'll say just one
word. I had supposed we were partners, who had gone into the homemaking
business."

He says what good are homes if they emasculate spirited men.

She says what good are spirited men if they make the world homeless.

"_I_ don't intend to make the world homeless."

"No, only your wife."

Well, Prometheus gives in, of course, and abandons his plan, as
millions of others have done, after talks with their wives. But ah,
there is another great force besides wives in the world.

It happened, as you know, that Prometheus didn't get on well with Zeus.
They had different ideas as to how th