"No! What?"
"You will burn up another year or so; you will come very, very near a good many things; and then you will marry, and turn into a devoted, loyal little Hausfrau—like a million other little Hausfraus who have thought they were in this world to do anything else but marry!"
"No, no! Don't you dare say that!" she said, covering her ears and stamping her foot. "That never!"
"Mark my prophecy," he said, with mock solemnity, delighted at the fury he had aroused.
"No, no! I won't be commonplace!" she cried. "I am in this world to do something unusual, extraordinary. I'm not like every other little woman. Marriage? Never! Three meals a day at the same hours—the same man—domesticity! Horrors!"
"Of course, of course," he said, with his provoking analytic exactness of phrase. "My dear girl, this is not a real life you are indulging in! Some day, perhaps, I'll discuss it more frankly with you. All this is a phase of mild hysteria. Do you know what you are doing? You're not living; you're rejecting life—yes, just that!—with every man you meet. The time comes when you will have to select. The forces of nature you are playing with are bigger than you; they'll conquer you in the end—decide for you! Now you play at fooling men so much that you fool yourself. When you marry, you will surprise yourself!"
"Stop!" she cried furiously. "Marriage! Yes, that's all you men believe we are capable of! But we are different now. We can be free—we can live our own lives! And I will not be commonplace. Nothing can make me that. I'd rather have a tragic love-affair than that! Oh, what's the use of living, if you have to do as every one else does!"
She went to the window at the side, covering the ground with the leap of a panther, working herself to a fury.
"Do you know what this wall is?" she cried, striking the curtain, which rolled up with the report of a pistol—"this ugly, hateful, brutal wall that I hate, loathe, despise? That's matrimony!—ugly, cold, horrid wall!"
She groped with her hand, caught the tassel, and pulled the shade without turning around.