One afternoon he came home very tired. She was sitting in the drawing-room, waiting for him. Her ball of cotton had fallen on the floor. In passing, his foot got entangled in the cotton; at his next step he pulled her crochet work out of her hand and dragged it along; then he lost his temper and kicked it aside.
She exclaimed at his rudeness.
He retorted that he had no time to bother about her rubbish, and advised her to spend her time more profitably. He had to think of his dissertation, if he was to have a career at all. And she ought to consider the question of how to limit their household expenses.
Things had gone far indeed!
On the next day the young wife, her eyes swollen with weeping, was knitting socks for her husband. He told her he could buy them cheaper ready-made. She burst into tears. What was she to do? The maid did all the work of the house, there was not enough work in the kitchen for two. She always dusted the rooms. Did he want her to send the maid away?
“No, no!”
“What did he want, then?”
He didn’t know himself, but he was sure that something was wrong. Their expenses were too high. That was all. They couldn’t go on living at their present rate, and then—somehow he could never find time to work at his dissertation.
Tears, kisses, and a grand reconciliation! But now he started staying away from home in the evening several times a week. Business! A man must show himself! If he stays at home, he will be overlooked and forgotten!
A year had passed; there were no signs of the arrival of a baby. “How like a little liaison I once had in the old days,” he thought; “there is only one difference: this one is duller and costs more.” There was no more conversation, now; they merely talked of household matters. “She has no brain,” he thought. “I am listening to myself when I am talking to her, and the apparent depths of her eyes is a delusion, due to the size of her pupils—the unusual size of her pupils.—”