“You have to live for your wife and children,” she said with firmness.
“Meg has plenty to secure her and the children as long as they live,” he said, smiling. “So I don’t know that I’m essential.”
“But you are,” she replied. “You are necessary as a father and a husband, if not as a provider.”
“I think,” said he, “marriage is more of a duel than a duet. One party wins and takes the other captive, slave, servant—what you like. It is so, more or less.”
“Well?” said Lettie.
“Well!” he answered. “Meg is not like you. She wants me, part of me, so she’d kill me rather than let me go loose.”
“Oh, no!” said Lettie, emphatically.
“You know nothing about it,” he said quietly.
“In the marital duel Meg is winning. The woman generally does; she has the children on her side. I can’t give her any of the real part of me, the vital part that she wants—I can’t, any more than you could give kisses to a stranger. And I feel that I’m losing—and don’t care.”
“No,” she said, “you are getting morbid.”