“I shall not want to marry. I am wedded to my profession.”
“O Dudley!… Dudley!…” She slipped off the table where she had been jauntily seated, and came and stood beside him, passing her arm through his. “Can’t you see I’d just die of a little house in the suburbs, looking after the housekeeping: it’s the most dreadful and awful thing on the face of the earth. I’m not a bit sorry for slaves, and prisoners, and shipwrecked sailors, and East-end starvelings; every bit of sympathy I’ve got is used up for the girls who’ve got to stay in hundrum homes, and be nothing, and do nothing, but just finished young ladies. Work is the finest thing in the world. It’s just splendid to have something real to do, and be paid for it. Why, they can’t even go to prison, or be hungry, or anything except possible wives for possible men who may or may not happen to want them.”
“Of course you are talking arrant nonsense,” Dudley replied frigidly. “I don’t know where in the world you get all your queer ideas. Woman’s sphere is most decidedly the home; you seem to—” but a small hand was clapped vigorously over his mouth, and eyes of feigned horror searching his.
“Do you know, I’m half afraid you’ve lived in your musty old books so long, Dudley,” with mock seriousness, “that you’ve lost all count of time. It is about a thousand years since sane and sensible men believed all that drivel about women’s only sphere being the home, and since women were content to be mere chattels, stuck in with the rest of the furniture, to look after the children. Nowadays the jolly, sensible woman that a man likes for wife or pal, is very often a busy worker.”
“Let her work busily at home, then!”
“Why, you’ll want me to crochet antimacassars next, or cross-stitch a sampler! Just imagine the thing if I tried! It would have dreadful results, because I should be sure to use bad language—I couldn’t help it; and the article I should concoct would make people faint, or turn cross-eyed or colour-blind. I shan’t do nearly so much harm in the end as a City secretary with an actress pal.”
“One thing is quite certain: you mean, as usual, to have your own way, and my feelings go for nothing at all.”
He turned away from her, and took up his hat to go out.
“Your protestations of affection, Hal, are apt to seem both insincere and out of place.”
The tears came swiftly to her eyes, and she took a quick step towards him, but he had gone, and closed the door after him before she could speak. She watched his retreating figure, with the tears still lingering, and then suddenly she smiled.