But she raved on:
"No, I wouldn't! I wouldn't, I tell you! What do you expect of women? You expect us to want babies and bear them in all that—hell, and be pleased to have them; and—and to put up with begging from you for them! And you don't care how weak we are—how our backs ache; you don't care if the baby goes out or stays in—if I go out or stay in. It's your child, isn't it? It's not all my fault we had it, is it? There's a lucid question for you! Answer it!"
"I will do no such thing!" he cried angrily. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself—a woman—a woman suggesting she doesn't want a baby!"
"I didn't say it! I suggest I don't want one of yours!"
"My God!" said Osborn, recoiling.
Marie grew ice-cold when she had said a thing that she would have thought impossible to say; but there was a keen triumph in the ice-coldness. She had silenced him.
"Isn't married life ugly?" she asked. "Isn't it little and mean and sordid and stingy and unjust? You create a condition which will tie me to the house; you are angry with the condition because it's expensive; you're angry with me for being house-tied. Can I help it? Can I help anything? Do you think I don't want theatres and to go out to dinner with you as I used to? The baby's yours, isn't he, as well as mine?"
"Marie," said Osborn, "Marie—"
He searched for things to say.
"I wish I had never married you—I wish I had never married at all," said Marie. "Men won't understand; they're impatient, they're brutes! And you haven't answered my question yet."