"I'm looking."

"Then you see I've changed. You thought so when you came in. I'm young again; I've rested and got my complexion back. My hair's nice; I get time for regular shampoos now. I spend a lot of my time on myself.

It's lovely. And my teeth, have you noticed them?"

She set them together and opened her lips to show him all the gleamy whiteness between.

"I spent ten pounds on them, having them filled and cleaned and polished; I go regularly to the dentist now. And my hands, have you noticed them?"

Osborn met her question by a dead silence.

"They're as they used to be again. And I've done it all in this year you've been away. And there's another thing--it occurred to me the other day when I was wondering what really made all the difference--there's not been a cross word or a grumble in this flat for twelve months. That's happiness. Heavens! That keeps women young!"

She stopped and thought, and continued slowly:

"Marriage is funny. It's a thing men can't bear unless it's gilded.

And they vent their intolerance. Do you know that before you went away--for four years--I scarcely ever expected you to say loving or civil things. Before you went out in the mornings you shouted for the breakfast, and I was hurrying all I could; and you grumbled if the children made a noise. And when you came in, if dinner wasn't ready or right, you grumbled at that again. And in the week-ends the kids dared hardly play, and I was buffer all the time between you and them. It's just what happens in thousands of homes, of course."

"This exaggeration--"

"Ah, it isn't. It sounds bad, but it isn't so very. It's rather ordinary. And, Osborn, do you remember when I had to ask you for money--?"

She looked at him freezingly. "Do you think a woman who's been begged and cajoled and petted into marrying a man enjoys creeping and crawling to him for odd shillings for household expenses? Do men think we enjoy it or do it wilfully, that they grudge it so? We can't help it."

"Where's all this harangue--"

"There's more to it yet. Do you know when you told me you were going away at once for a year, I thought I was broken? I loved you so. It seemed awful to see the gladness and relief in your face at leaving us, getting rid of us for a whole year! I'd been watching you for so long, and seeing you change, and get irritated with it all, and trying to keep young for you when I was tired out. And that night, when I saw how I'd failed, how dead your love was--"

"No; it was never dead, Marie."

"Wasn't it? Was it sleeping, then? Where was it? What was it doing?"

"You see--"

"Oh, yes, I see. I saw, then, how joyfully you shelved us all. You were like a boy let out of school. And I'd worked so hard to keep home happy for you, but you just thought of it as a place of bills and worry and children, presided over by a perpetual asker. That night before you went, do you remember leaving me to mend your things?"

"Yes."

"When you had gone, I cried, and prayed; it didn't do any good. I didn't know women could suffer so--even when the children were born--"

Osborn sprang up. "Don't," he said hurriedly, with visions of anguish in his mind.

"Very well. I don't want to harrow you. I'm only just giving the explanation you asked. A year ago you left me, glad to go, and I thought my heart would break. But it didn't. And it's changed. You've come back--to exact again all the things that husbands do exact. But I don't want you."

She had appalled him.

He stammered hoarsely: "I don't understand--I can't see what you want us to do."

"Well; to live--apart."

"You can't mean it."

"But I do. How often am I to say, I don't want you? The last part of this year, after the pain was over, I've been as glad to be without you as during the first part of the year you were glad to be without me. Isn't that plain?"

"You're making it horribly plain. And now I'm going to ask you, could I help being poor and short of cash?"

She shook her head. "No! But I couldn't either, and you were awfully down on me."

"'Down' on you! _I!_"

"You grumbled persistently every day. The kiddies and I just waited upon your moods. And if I had to ask for anything, you weren't kind about it; you just flung out of the place, leaving me all the worries.

You never helped nor shared. I've come to this conclusion lately; that it simply isn't worth while living with a person who grumbles persistently and has to be propitiated every day."

He reflected deeply, his hands in his trousers pockets.

"I think I'm taking all this sermon peaceably enough," he barked savagely.

Again he had that disaffected look from her; she seemed to analyse him coldly.

"It isn't a sermon. Go on grumbling and nagging and grudging every day, if you want to. I haven't asked you to refrain. I've merely explained that, as a result of your husbandly behaviour, you've ceased to attract me, and I don't want to live with you--intimately--again."

He caught her arm. "Look here! I know. You've been to some of these beastly Suffragette meetings."

She laughed scornfully.

"Suffragette! Don't be an ass, dear!"

"No," he said under his breath, regarding her, "you haven't. Hanged if I know what you have been doing."

"I told you. Getting my youth back. Do you know what a very pretty young girl feels like? Did you know what I used to feel like when you were engaged to me? Like a queen with a crowd of courtiers at her orders and you the most courtier-like of them all! You used to hang on every word I said and promise me heaven and earth, and my every look was law. Oh! the power a pretty young girl feels in herself!"

Standing on tiptoe she looked into the glass, touched her fluffs of hair and the purple earrings with tender finger-tips.

"I've got it back," she said with a thrill. "I feel it flowing back; the power one has through being pretty and magnetic. If a woman's tired out she can't be magnetic. But I've got it all again--and more.

I wonder if a man can ever understand the pleasure of having it? It's coming to me again just as I had it fresh and unconquered in those dear old days when you were at my feet."

He spoke in a sort of beaten amazement. "If you want me again at your feet--"

"Thank you, I don't. I'll never pay the price again. Never! Never!"

"Then whom do you want? Do you mean there's anyone else? By God! if there is--"

As she saw his fury she could laugh. "There isn't."

"Let's sit down again," he said more quietly; "this isn't threshed out yet."

"If more discussion gives you any pleasure I'll discuss. But what I said I meant. I'm not glad to see you; I'm sorry. You mean the breaking-up of household peace for me again. Men would be surprised, if they knew how many wives are glad to see their husbands go."

"Take care you don't drive me into going for good. Your way of treating a man is pretty dangerous."