ason is, because the man finds, after the novelty is worn off, that
his wife is uninteresting, has nothing to talk about; and so his love
cools to a good-natured, passive tolerance of her. Most married men,
when alone with their wives, sit in stupid silence. But see how the
husband livens up if a man joins them! This man has been out in the
interesting world. The wife has been cooped up at home. The man has
something to talk about. The wife has not. Well, I am going to be out
in the interesting world, doing something. I am going to have
something to talk to my husband about. I am going to be interesting to
him, as interesting to him as any man. And I am going to try to hold
his love, Arnold, the love of his heart, the love of his head, to the
very end!"

He was exasperated by her persistence, but he still held himself in
check.

"That sounds very plausible to you. But there is one thing in your
argument you forget."

"And that?"

"We are grown-up people, you and I. I guess we can talk straight out."

"Yes. Go on!"

He gazed at her very steadily for a moment.

"There are such things as children, you know."

She returned his steady look.

"Of course," she said quickly. "Every normal woman wants children. And
I should want them too."

"There--that settles it," he said with triumph. "You can't combine
children and a profession."

"But I can!" she cried. "And I should give the children the very best
possible care, too! Of course there are successive periods in which
the mother would have to give her whole attention to the children. But
if she lives till she is sixty-five the sum total of her forty or
forty-five married years that she has to give up wholly to her
children amounts to but a few years. There remains all the balance of
her life that she could give to other work. Do you realize how
tremendously the world is changing, and how women's work is changing
with it?"

"Oh, let's don't mix in statistics, and history, and economics with
our love!"

"But we've got to if our love is to last!" she cried. "We're living in
a time when things are changing. We've got to consider the changes.
And the greatest changes are, and are going to be, in woman's work. Up
in our attic are my great-grandmother's wool carders, her spinning
wheel, her loom, all sorts of things; she spun, wove, made all the
clothing, did everything. These things are now done by professional
experts; that sort of work has been taken away from w