"I don't know what careless, unthinking remark I may have dropped," interrupted he angrily. "I certainly never intended to let you tear things up and make a mess." He walked up and down. "What possesses you anyhow?" he cried. "Why can't you behave yourself like a woman? I never heard of such nonsense! I want you to stop meddling in things that are beyond you. I want you to do your duty as a wife and a mother. I want you to stop annoying me. I didn't marry a blue-stocking, an unsexed thinking woman. I married a sweet, loving wife."
She sat on the edge of the hammock, perfectly still. It was as if he had struck her unconscious so suddenly that she had not yet fallen over.
"What devil keeps nagging at you?" he demanded, pausing in his angry stride to face her. "It must be some woman's having a bad influence on you. I'll not have it. I'll not have my home upset and my wife spoiled. Who is it, Courtney?"
She was silent.
"Answer me!"
"It's myself," replied she in a quiet, dumb way.
"It's not yourself. You are womanly."
"I've got to have something to do—something worth while—or I can't live."
"Attend to your house and your baby, like all true women."
"It isn't enough," replied she in the same monotonous, stupefied way. "It isn't enough for me, any more than it'd be for you."