She says that's unjust. She'd love to have him be a great hero, and she always has said so, but she doesn't see why he can't be one without leaving his wife.
Pegged down
Prometheus, with a groan at his bondage, walks out of the house, leaving her feeling injured and wondering at the hardness of men. And he stamps up and down the yard, working himself up into a state, and filling his mind with dark pictures. Must every married man sit at home with his wife in his arms, yearning for roving and achievement, but yearning in vain? Pegged down, with a baby as a peg, and a mortgage as jailer. Must every young fellow choose between a fiancée and adventure? Even when he does choose adventure, they won't let him alone. There will always be some girl at a window as he passes by, who will tempt him to stop and play dolls with her, and stay indoors for keeps, and wrestle with a mortgage for exercise, and give up the road. Prometheus swears. He tries to imagine what our epics would be like if wives wrote them: what heroes they'd sing. Tidy, amiable, hearthstone heroes, who'd always wind up the clock regularly, and never invent dangerous airplanes or seek the North Pole. Ulysses knitting sweaters by the fireside. George Washington feeding canaries....
Mrs. Prometheus sticks her head out of the window: "I'll say just one word. I had supposed we were partners, who had gone into the homemaking business."
He says what good are homes if they emasculate spirited men.
She says what good are spirited men if they make the world homeless.
"I don't intend to make the world homeless."
"No, only your wife."