"Nor do I!" she cried angrily. "Life's just one slow, beastly grind."
She ran out of the room to light the geyser, and tears were streaming
down her face, and sobs rising one upon the other in her heart. She
sank upon the one bathroom chair, leaned her head against the wall and
wept helplessly. Her body was shaken with her crying; never in her
life had she so cried before. She felt as if she must collapse under
its violence.

She thought: "Osborn's going out to dinner, and I can mope and starve
at home."

With the sub-conscious dutifulness of woman she realised that her bath
was ready; that she must hurry, that there was breakfast to make, and
the dining-room to sweep, and ... and ... what a string of tragic
drabnesses! Obeying this instinct of duty in her, she got, still
sobbing, into the bath, and her tears fell like rain into the hot
water. A man would have cried, "Damn the bath! Damn the breakfast!
Damn the brooms and dusters! Scrap 'em all!" And for the while he
would straightway have scrapped them and felt better. But Marie went
miserably on, as her mother and her grandmother and all those tired
women in the Tube had done times out of number, for the sisterhood of
woman is a strange thing.

Osborn met her as she was coming from her bath, quiet, subdued and
pale. Rather, he had been standing outside the door, waiting and
anxious. "Darling," he said scared, "what is it? Tell me! Aren't you
well? Has anything upset you? What can I do?"

Marie left her dressing-gown in his detaining hands and, sobbing