“But you’ve not understood, Harry. I gave up what was my life to me. To you I’d only—chucked it. Oh, but that hurt! That man’s supreme indifference, that is dominion.”
He said, “I’ll know it, dearest, for your sacrifice.”
She put out a hand as if to hold that word away. “Oh, trust not that. They talk of the ennoblement of sacrifice. Ah, do not believe it. It can go too long, too far, and then like wine too long matured... just acid, Harry. I never said a bitter thing to you until—thus sacrificing. It is the kennel dog again. If I went on I’d grow more bitter yet, more bitter and more bitter. It’s why women are so much more bitter than men. It’s what they’ve sacrificed. I’m going back, Harry. I’ve got to. You ask me if I’ve thought of everything. I have; but even if I had not this outrides it all. I have gone too far. She was right, that woman I told you of, who said that for a woman, once she has given herself to a thing, there is no comeback from it. I have tried. It is not to be done.”
There was a very long silence. She said, “It’s settled, Harry.”
He said, “Nothing’s been said, Rosalie, that gets over what I have said. There’s no home here while both of us are working. I have a right to a home. The children have a right to a home. Nothing gets over that.”
She answered, “Then, Harry, give yourself a home. Give the children a home.”
He said, “I am a man.”
She answered, “I am a woman.”