"Oh yes, dear," she says: "the plan's perfect. But you shouldn't go. You have such important work to attend to, here at home, without that. Some younger, less valuable person—"
"Ah, my dear," Prometheus laughs, "you're like every one else. You want to see the world helped, and wars won, whatever the cost; but you don't want either me or you to pay any part of the price. You think all dangerous work should be done by some other woman's husband."
Mrs. Prometheus purses her lips and her face becomes obstinate. "I don't think any married man has a right to take such risks," she observes.
"Well, you ought to hear what the single men say about that," he retorts. "It's pretty thick to expect them to die, they say, for other men's wives."
Mrs. Prometheus shrugs at the shallowness of those silly bachelors, and doesn't bother even to comment on their point of view. Instead, she says tactfully that she sees Prometheus has set his heart upon going, and she wants him to feel perfectly free to do just what he likes. Only there are certain practical matters that one must consider. There's the mortgage, and the laundress—unless he'd like to have her do the washing herself, which she'd be glad to do only he never took those stones out of her way, in the brook—and there's the bill for that last set of bear-skins that she got for the windows; and she doesn't see exactly how she can keep the home up by herself, if he is to wander around neglecting his real-estate business.
He says he won't be chained by his business.
She reminds him that she has already explained he's perfectly free. But she just wants to know how he wishes her to arrange in his absence.
Prometheus and Mrs. P.
"Very well, then," he blazes out, "I will give up my plan: let it go! let men go to the devil! I'm a prisoner, that's what it comes to. Like all married men. There isn't a damn one of us that's allowed to do what the world needs, or anything fine and unselfish."