here is the grindstone.

ELLIE [sitting down beside her, appeased]. That's better: you really
have the trick of falling in with everyone's mood; but you don't
understand, because you are not the sort of woman for whom there is only
one man and only one chance.

MRS HUSHABYE. I certainly don't understand how your marrying that object
[indicating Mangan] will console you for not being able to marry Hector.

ELLIE. Perhaps you don't understand why I was quite a nice girl this
morning, and am now neither a girl nor particularly nice.

MRS HUSHABYE. Oh, yes, I do. It's because you have made up your mind to
do something despicable and wicked.

ELLIE. I don't think so, Hesione. I must make the best of my ruined
house.

MRS HUSHABYE. Pooh! You'll get over it. Your house isn't ruined.

ELLIE. Of course I shall get over it. You don't suppose I'm going to sit
down and die of a broken heart, I hope, or be an old maid living on a
pittance from the Sick and Indigent Roomkeepers' Association. But my
heart is broken, all the same. What I mean by that is that I know that
what has happened to me with Marcus will not happen to me ever again. In
the world for me there is Marcus and a lot of other men of whom one is
just the same as another. Well, if I can't have love, that's no reason
why I should have poverty. If Mangan has nothing else, he has money.

MRS HUSHABYE. And are there no YOUNG men with money?

ELLIE. Not within my reach. Besides, a young man would have the right
to expect love from me, and would perhaps leave me when he found I could
not give it to him. Rich young men can get rid of their wives, you know,
pretty cheaply. But this object, as you call him, can expect nothing
more from me than I am prepared to give him.

MRS HUSHABYE. He will be your owner, remember. If he buys you, he will
make the bargain pay him and not you. Ask your father.

ELLIE [rising and strolling to the chair to contemplate their subject].
You need not trouble on that score, Hesione. I have more to give Boss
Mangan than he has to give me: it is I who am buying him, and at a
pretty good price too, I think. Women are better at that sort of bargain
than men. I have taken the Boss's measure; and ten Boss Mangans shall
not prevent me doing far more as I please as his wife than I have ever
been able to do as a poor girl. [Stooping to the recumbent figure].
Shall they, Boss? I think not. [She passes on to the drawing-table, and
leans against the e