MARY. You've taken to being a lady like a duck to water. Lazybones is the name I'd give you if you were still Ruth Butterworth, but I suppose this vain life is right for Mrs. Guy Barlow.
RUTH (rising). It isn't right. Idleness is never right, and least of all for me, because I know my idleness is paid for by the toil of others. Something has changed me, mother. I can't think of the past. I've forgotten what I was and what I used to think. I had ideals then, when I was poor. I'd noble thoughts of my own. The only thoughts I have to-day are thoughts of other's thinking. (Picking Byron up.) You're right, I'm lazy. Bone lazy, and I like it. I like fine clothes and soft living and hands that aren't work-roughened.
MARY. Small blame to you for that. I'd do the same myself.
RUTH. I'm getting fat. I'm like a pig. I never want to go out. The house is soft and warm and comfortable, and the sights I see outside are hard and cold and comfortless.
MARY. You may well say that. Things go from bad to worse, With wages down and food up it's near impossible to make ends meet. And that's for us, with your father an overlooker. What it is for the weavers, I don't know. There's empty hearths and empty bellies this winter time.
RUTH. I know. I know and I don't care. I used to care. Something's gone dead inside me, killed by the comfort and the ease and the good living and all the things I used to hate and despise until I had them for my own.
MARY. Eh, don't you worry! When a lass has got a good husband same as you have it's little room she has in her mind for thoughts of other things.
RUTH. That's my punishment. Guy's good to me. (Changing tone.) Mother, I'll tell you something. I love my husband.
MARY (puzzled). Well, don't tell me that as if it was news to me. What did you marry him for if you didn't love him?
RUTH. I married him to use him for an instrument. And I don't care now for the things I cared for then. I only care for Guy, and what Guy does is right because he does it.