“It’s all very well to hurt my feelings like that because you happened to be feeling in a bad temper,” she said, “and then think you’ve only got to make a pleasant little speech to put everything right again. Besides, it isn’t only to-day; it’s day after day since we’ve been married. I feel like Gulliver when he was being tied up by the Lilliputians. I can’t find any one big rope that’s destroying my freedom, but somehow or other my freedom is being destroyed. Did you marry me casually, as people buy birds, to put me in a cage?”
“My dear, I married you because I loved you. You know I fought against the idea of marrying you for a long time, but I loved you too much.”
“Are you afraid of my loyalty?” she demanded. “Do you think I go to Oaktown to be made love to?”
“Sylvia!” he protested.
“I go there because I’m bored, bored, endlessly, hopelessly, paralyzingly bored. It’s my own fault. I never ought to have married you. I can’t think why I did, but at least it wasn’t for any mercenary reason. You’re not to believe that. Philip, I do like you, but why will you always upset me?”
He thought for a moment and asked her presently what greater freedom she wanted, what kind of freedom.
“That’s it,” she went on. “I told you I couldn’t find any one big rope that bound me. There isn’t a single thread I can’t snap with perfect ease, but it’s the multitude of insignificant little threads that almost choke me.”
“You told me you thought you would like to live in the country,” he reminded her.
“I do, but, Philip, do remember that I really am still a child. I’ve got a deep voice and I can talk like a professor, but I’m still a hopeless kid. I oughtn’t to have to tell you this. You ought to see it for yourself if you love me.”
“Dearest Sylvia, I’m always telling you how young you are, and there’s nothing that annoys you more,” he said.