was afraid to hear more of her. Or she would have
come knocking at the door and lured him back only to renew the war at
some appeal of his to that sense of justice he was forever hoping to
find in her soul.

He was aligned now along the very edge of the mattress. It was childish
of her to behave so spitefully, but what could he do except repay her in
kind? She would not have understood any other behavior. She had turned
her back on him, too, and stretched herself as thin as she could as
close to the edge as she could lie without falling out.

What a vixen she was! And at this time of all when she should have been
gentle, soothing. Even if she had thought him wrong and misinterpreted
his natural vehemence as virulence, she should have been patient. What
was a wife for but to be a helpmeet? She knew how easily his temper was
assuaged, she knew the very words. Why had she avoided them?

And she was to blame for so many of his problems. Her bills and her
children's bills were increasing. She took so much of his time. She
needed so much entertaining, so much waiting on, so much listening to.
Neither she nor the children produced. They simply spent. In a crisis
they never gave help, but exacted it.

In business, as in a shipwreck, strong and useful men must step back and
sacrifice themselves that the women and children might be saved--for
other men to take care of. And what frauds these women were! All
allurement and gentleness till they had entrapped their victims, then
fiends of exaction, without sympathy for the big work of men, without
interest in the world's problems, alert to ridiculous suspicions,
reckless with accusations, incapable of equity, and impatient of
everything important.

Marriage was a trap, masking its steel jaws and its chain under flowers.
What changelings brides were! A man never led away from the altar the
woman he led thither. Before marriage, so interested in a man's serious
talk and the business of his life! After marriage, unwilling to listen
to any news of import, sworn enemies of achievement, putting an
ingrowing sentiment above all other nobilities of the race.

And his wife was of all women the most womanish. She had lost what early
graces she had. In the earlier days they had never quarreled. That is,
of course, they had quarreled, but differently. They had left each other
several times, but how rapturously they had returned. And then she had
craved his forgiveness and granted hers wit