"Nor you. Look here! Bread and butter, and candles and bootblacking, and laundering, and expenses for a baby when you've got one, are all everyday things, aren't they? If a woman's got to fuss and plan and cry and worry and fight just every day for the everyday things, is life worth while at all? Isn't a girl like me, in full possession of her health, mistress of her own life, filling her own pocket, better off than a girl like Marie who's married and lost it all?"
"Are you?" he demanded, stirred enough to look right into Julia's eyes; and he saw what deep eyes they were, and what sincere trouble and question lay in them.
She fenced doggedly: "I don't see why Marie should be made wretched; she's only twenty-six. Is she to have that kind of fuss every day of her life?"
"She won't want a new perambulator every day, we'll hope."
"Oh ... don't be cheap! You know what I mean. Why can't men meet domestic liabilities fairly and squarely with their wives? Why must they be coaxed to look at a bill which they authorise their wives to incur? Why is a man vexed because he's got to pay the butcher, when he eats meat every day of his life?"
"Since you ask, my dear girl, I'll tell you. People are too selfish to marry nowadays and make a good job of it. Most men always were; but then women used to go to the wall and go unprotestingly. Now something's roused them to jib. They're making the hell of a row. They won't stand it; and nobody else can. So what's to be done?"
"Is this marriage?" Julia asked coldly.
"No," said Rokeby, "it's war."
"It ought not to be."
"What do you suggest?"