thought impossible to say; but there was a keen triumph in the
ice-coldness. She had silenced him.

"Isn't married life ugly?" she asked. "Isn't it little and mean and
sordid and stingy and unjust? You create a condition which will tie me
to the house; you are angry with the condition because it's expensive;
you're angry with me for being house-tied. Can I help it? Can I help
anything? Do you think I don't _want_ theatres and to go out to
dinner with you as I used to? The baby's yours, isn't he, as well as
mine?"

"Marie," said Osborn, "Marie--"

He searched for things to say.

"I wish I had never married you--I wish I had never married at all,"
said Marie. "Men won't understand; they're impatient, they're brutes!
And you haven't answered my question yet."

Osborn went out of the flat.

The inevitable answer of the goaded man--anger, silence and
retreat--cried aloud to her.

She was afraid of herself.

What terrible things she had said--she, a little, new, young wife and
mother!

She spoke out into the stillness, shocked, appealing, still trembling