e had remained mute for some
while, "from the furniture people on the instalment plan?"

"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 ac