“I know, I know. In the meantime, life for us women is in a stage of transition. Until these better forms develop we are going to have a hard time. It will be difficult for me to manage, I know. But I’m certain I can manage it.”
He stood up. His face was very red, and he swallowed once or twice before the words seemed able to come out.
“I’m surprised, Katherine—surprised!—that you should be so persistent in this nonsense. What you say is all against nature. It won’t work.”
“Perhaps not. But at least you’ll let me try! That’s all I ask of you—that you let me try!”
“It would be weak in me, wrong in me, to yield.”
“Then you’re not willing to give me a chance?”
He shook his head.
She rose and moved before him.
“But, Arnold, do you realize what you are doing?” she cried with desperate passion. “Do you realize what it is I’m asking you for? Work, interesting work—that’s what I need to make me happy, to make you happy! Without it, I shall be miserable, and you will be miserable in having a miserable wife about you—and all our years together will be years of misery. So you see what a lot I’m fighting for: work, development, happiness!—the happiness of all our married years!”