Marjorie thought sullenly for a moment. "Nothing comes out of myself," she said.
"I don't think you realize a bit what my life has become," she went on; "how much I'm like some one who's been put in a pleasant, high-class prison."
"This house! It's your own!"
"It doesn't give me an hour's mental occupation in the day. It's all very well to say I might do more in it. I can't—without absurdity. Or expenditure. I can't send the girl away and start scrubbing. I can't make jam or do ornamental needlework. The shops do it better and cheaper, and I haven't been trained to it. I've been trained not to do it. I've been brought up on games and school-books, and fed on mixed ideas. I can't sit down and pacify myself with a needle as women used to do. Besides, I not only detest doing needlework but I hate it—the sort of thing a woman of my kind does anyhow—when it's done. I'm no artist. I'm not sufficiently interested in outside things to spend my time in serious systematic reading, and after four or five novels—oh, these meetings are better than that! You see, you've got a life—too much of it—I haven't got enough. I wish almost I could sleep away half the day. Oh! I want something real, Rag; something more than I've got." A sudden inspiration came to her. "Will you let me come to your laboratory and work with you?"
She stopped abruptly. She caught up her own chance question and pointed it at him, a vitally important challenge. "Will you let me come to your laboratory and work?" she repeated.
Trafford thought. "No," he said.
"Why not?"
"Because I'm in love with you. I can't think of my work when you're about.... And you're too much behind. Oh my dear! don't you see how you're behind?" He paused. "I've been soaking in this stuff of mine for ten long years."
"Yes," assented Marjorie flatly.
He watched her downcast face, and then it lifted to him with a helpless appeal in her eyes, and lift in her voice. "But look here, Rag!" she cried—"what on earth am I to DO?"