“Don't let us quarrel, Thornton,” she said. “It is so sordid and petty. Let us try quietly to understand one another.”
His glance fell first, and he threw himself back in his chair with a laugh and unfolded his paper.
“All right—we'll bar scenes. Only don't say anything too severe or you'll spoil my breakfast.”
“Thornton,” she said, not changing her attitude, “I think I know what my duty is towards you, and I try to perform it. Has it ever struck you that you may have some duties towards me?”
“I can't say it has,” he replied.
“I don't think you understand me, Thornton. I will try to make it clearer to you. As far as you will let me take an interest in your life, I do so. I am more than willing to make any sacrifices—to give up everything for you. But when you do not want me, as this autumn, I surely may remember that I have a life of my own to lead.”
“And suppose that life does not suit me?”
“That is the point, Thornton. If you wished me, out of love for you, to do anything, I would do it. But this is a matter in which love has no place. Provided I am scrupulous in all my duties towards you, I have a right to my own life, to my own antipathies, to my own favourite pursuits—in fact to myself as an individual, and it is your duty towards me to recognise it.”
“I don't quite see what you are driving at,” said Thornton. “You can dislike sweet champagne and paint pictures and read Schopenhauer if you like. Who is preventing you? But in certain matters, as you are my wife, you have got to do what I tell you.”
“To take an extreme case, by way of argument: Suppose the fancy seized you to order me to remain in my bedroom all day—you would expect me to obey you?”