isn't as if it hadn't happened before! It isn't as if I hadn't pointed
it out! But women are amateurs. All women are alike. All housekeeping
is amateurish. She (Mrs. Omicron, the criminal) has nothing in this
world to do but run the house--and see how she runs it! No order! No
method! Has she ever studied housekeeping scientifically? Not she!
Does she care? Not she! If she had any real sense of responsibility,
if she had the slightest glimmering of her own short-comings, she
wouldn't have started on the ring question. But there you are! She
only thinks of spending, and titivating herself. I wish she had to do
a little earning. She'd find out a thing or two then. She'd find out
that life isn't all moonstones and motor-cars. Ring, indeed! It's the
lack of tact that annoys me. I am an ill-used man. All husbands are
ill-used men. The whole system wants altering. However, I must keep my
end up. And I will keep my end up. Ring, indeed! No tact!"

He fostered a secret fury. And he enjoyed fostering it. There was
exaggeration in these thoughts, which, he would admit next day, were
possibly too sweeping in their scope. But he would maintain the
essential truth of them. He was not really and effectively furious
against Mrs. Omicron; he did not, as a fact, class her with forgers
and drunken chauffeurs; indeed, the fellow loved her in his fashion.
But he did pass a mature judgment against her. He did wrap up his
grudge in cotton-wool and put it in a drawer and examine it with
perverse pleasure now and then. He did increase that secretion of
poison which weakens the social health of nine hundred and ninety-nine
in a thousand married lives--however delightful they may be. He did
render more permanent a noxious habit of mind. He did appreciably and
doubly and finally impair the conjugal happiness--for it must not be
forgotten that in creating a grievance for himself he also gave his
wife a grievance. He did, in fine, contribute to the general mass of