Marry, indeed! Why, that had nothing to do with the case at all. It was Ruth's maddening stupidity that had made him ask Kenneth in. These rows with one's sister were horrible—and bad for work.... Besides, they used to be such pals as kids: it wasn't nice, now, to be quarrelling like any costermonger and his wife. Yet each absurd quarrel was followed by one more absurd.
What had it been all about to-night? He had forgotten that already. The actual row was a surprise. Ruth had started this one. He had not seen it coming, even, till they were both on their feet.
She was so maddening, you see!
He didn't mind an egoist. He sometimes thought, in moments of depression, he was one himself (but he did not believe in introspection). It was an egoist who claimed to be a martyr that aroused his anger.
Ruth was always claiming to have sacrificed herself. She didn't matter. No one must consider her. She hadn't married. She gave her life up willingly to her dear brother. If he trod on her sometimes, she only liked to feel that he was free to wing his way to fame. And all that sort of stuff ... when all the while, she never did a single thing he wanted, but in the most selfish way made everything as hard as it could be for his work, when she herself was doing nothing! What a fuss if he was half an hour or so late for their lonely meal! How could it matter? He was in the middle of a paragraph, sometimes: and what did she do after dinner, anyhow? Nothing but play Patience, while he went back to work! How could it make any difference at what hour she dined?...
Probably to-night had been some trifle of that sort: he had forgotten, really; but at the end of it she had stood up and said, for the first time: "Well, I can always be turned out. There's no real reason why we should live together."
"The first sensible remark you've made," he had replied, made elementary by anger, and gone out to telephone to Boyd.
Why, after all, did they live together? Would he be happier without her? Or would a cook-housekeeper be worse? How did other men get on? Most of them, somehow, seemed to marry.... Boyd would know, though—he went to so many homes. But Boyd might say that it was not quite fair on Ruth.... That was nonsense, though. Brothers weren't ever meant or bound to keep their sisters, and thirty-eight was not too old for women to get married. It was the fashionable age. Nobody now cared for girls. Only Ruth never wanted to go out, or, if she did, it was to some quite silly show where he could not be seen.... Well, he would see what Boyd said. That was the best way.
And Boyd, having listened to the passionate recital in an owlish silence, had answered: "It's quite obvious. You ought to marry!" Just what those idiots of doctors always said. Marriage and golf were their only two ideas, even for any one with liver.
"Why ought I to marry?" he blazed out suddenly, to the surprise of his friend, who could not follow his thought during the long pause.