"What have I said?" I asked.
"No marriage is happy," she said gravely.
"Yes!" I responded.
"Not in the sense you understand the term. That's what we mean when we say you don't know anything about it. Marriage suits some men and women more than others, but that isn't to say the people it suits are any the happier. In fact, it's often the other way. They're frightfully unhappy at times. Very few married women haven't been on the point of—of making a dash for freedom at some time or other. Women you wouldn't accuse of a single rebellious thought all their born days. You'd say they were crazy. Perhaps so, at the time. They get all on edge. Weak, weedy women are different. They haven't the same call for freedom, somehow."
"What do you mean by this dash for freedom business?" I asked. Bill looked at me solemnly.
"Marriage is a ring-fence round a pretty small patch, as a rule," she observed. "A woman goes into it gladly. She feels young and weak and ignorant, and when she's married she feels safe. But when she grows up to her full stature of mind and body, and she's no longer weak and ignorant, it's different. It's no longer safety first with her."
"But love ..." I began. She stopped me.
"Oh, love's got nothing at all to do with it, you sentimental old thing. How old was Juliet—fourteen, wasn't she?" she asked suddenly, staring out of the window. I nodded.
"Well, there you are!" She has many of her husband's expressions. "At thirty-two, say, she would have been a fine, big, handsome woman, knowing the world and alive all round. The chances are she would have had a storm, as you call it."
"If she'd married Romeo?" I asked.