That very evening, it so happened, for the first time Richard made a remark that gave her an opening. "Why don't you stay down in the evenings?" said he. "It doesn't disturb me for you to play and sing in the sitting room when I'm in the library."
"The last few times I did it," replied she, "you slipped away to the shop."
He reddened, laughed guiltily. "Did I? Well—perhaps in certain moods——"
"Oh, I'm not complaining," she assured him. "I've got used to our leading separate lives—long ago.... I like it as much as you do."
"Separate lives," said he reflectively. "It's true, we don't see much of each other. Husbands and wives rarely do, when the man amounts to anything, or is trying to amount to anything."
"Unless they work together."
"And that's impossible where people are of our station."
Our station! Her lip curled and her heart protested. How could a human being with a human heart talk of a station too high for love—love that was the soul of life.
"Also," continued he, reflective and absent, "it's out of the question where the husband is pursuing an intellectual occupation." Even had he not been merely thinking aloud, it would not have occurred to him that there was any slur in a statement of an elementary axiom as to the different spheres of the two sexes. "And," he went on, "it's unnecessary to married happiness, as we've proved. You had an idea once—do you remember?—"
"Yes—I remember."