"You know perfectly well that nothing can be done!" he snaps her up,
like a tiger snapping at the fawn. And his eyes, challenging hers,
seem to say: "Can I neglect my business? Can I shirk my
responsibilities? Where would you be if I shirked them? Where would
the children be? What about old age, sickness, death, quarter-day,
rates, taxes, and your new hat? I have to provide for the rainy day
and for the future. I am succeeding, moderately; but let there be no
mistake--success means that I must sacrifice present pleasure.
Pleasure is all very well for you others, but I--" And then he will
finish aloud, with the air of an offended and sarcastic martyr:
"Something be done, indeed!"

She sighs. The domestic scene is over.

Now, he may be honestly convinced that nothing can be done. Let us
grant as much. But obviously it suits his pride to assume that nothing
can be done. To admit the contrary would be to admit that he was
leaving something undone, that he had organized his existence
clumsily, even that he had made a fundamental miscalculation in the
arrangement of his career. He has confessed to grave dissatisfaction.
It behoves him, for the sake of his own dignity and reputation, to be
quite sure that the grave dissatisfaction is unavoidable, inevitable,
and that the blame for it rests with the scheme of the universe, and
not with his particular private scheme. His rôle is that of the brave,
strong, patient victim of an alleged natural law, by reason of which
the present must ever be sacrificed to the future, and he discovers a
peculiar miserable delight in the rôle. "Miserable" is the right
adjective.