“Perhaps it does—perhaps she’s right. But only in the large. Certainly little habits of life don’t.”
“It’s easy to feel that way up here, but down in the midst of those lights you can’t get the sweep of things. Little things irritate—habits of life do matter.”
“You ought to get away by yourself more. When I feel irritated I go up to my rooms and read what a lot of my betters, long dead, had to say and had to think.”
“Can’t be done by the mother of three.”
“I question that. The mother of three would certainly profit. I hate to see you all harassed. It isn’t right. Since the first day I saw you it’s always been a satisfaction to me just to think of you—even when I didn’t see you—as being calm and peaceful and beautiful. You mustn’t lose those things.”
“I wonder if I ever was calm and peaceful, passing up the other exaggeration. Now I nag at myself. I don’t know when it began.”
“Anything special on your mind, or just the accumulation of domestic duties?”
“I hate it,” cried Cecily suddenly, with a passion quite unlike her. “I hate the way people are living. I can’t make it out—anything out. If the principle they taught me that marriage is an institution for the home, for the bringing up of children is right, then all this—this fun—is wrong. You can’t have what they call ‘fun’ and be a good woman. You can’t play at making love with all this dancing that is only embracing—with all this loose talk—and keep your feeling for your husband or wife clean. And if you don’t you’re stupid or a bore—out of date. I know what people think of me. Women have actually told me that I’m foolish to have three children; that I shouldn’t let my household submerge me; that Dick is bound to crave ‘fun’! He does like it; he’s happier when we are going out places all the time; he makes himself cheap with these silly women; he uses the words he used to me when he talks to them—oh, that seems trivial, doesn’t it?”
“No, no, not trivial! Don’t talk any more, Cecily. You’ll regret it if you do. I’m going to drive on. I’m afraid, a little, that you are battering yourself against a real difficulty, against things which can’t be obviated. I want to think about it. See if I can’t explain some things to you later. But it’s hard to have to explain things when I am so sorry, Cecily, that I lose my philosophy.”
“Don’t bother, Matthew. I guess perhaps I’m just tired and a little jealous.”