He blurted out that she continually told him of how helpful the wives of authors frequently were; these wives, it appeared from her caustic comparisons, saw to it that during the writing of books they were relieved of all annoyances; and she had always wound up by calling on God to know what she would do if no one helped her. In his resentment at this inference, he had, I gathered from what he did not say, studied her with a new cold detachment. He had reminded her of her tantrums when she fancied him falling off in his work. He had gone on to draw her attention to the point of his being the man of the family: would it be suitable for him to be at her disposal all of the working day? He had said--he assured me that he had been dispassionate--“Do you realize that if this goes on I shall be unfit for work?” He gave me a sidelong glance, and said by way of excuse that our crowd talked to each other of all details of our lives; he could not see that he was disloyal to Eva in telling me this. With no intention of entering into it, I said sweetly that he should be able to manage his wife as men had always managed their wives, by the power of a greater shout. “Are you laughing at me?” he demanded. “For I assure you that it’s no laughing matter. It has--got out of my hands.” He hurried on with a rather feeble statement that it was not in any way the fault of Eva, who was a particularly guileless creature; it was the fault of certain persons who put things into her head. “And now you want me to put something into her head?” He hastened to deny this. He said, out of a clear sky but with immense vindictiveness, that he should have kicked Spencer Mapes out of the house long ago. “Why did I fail to kick him out? What’s lacking in me that I never act on my impulses?” He laughed, then. “I seldom act on my convictions, to tell the truth. This is because I stop long enough to think it out--I want to be fair, you know. But a man shouldn’t stop long enough to think out a crisis. Once it is thought out, a crisis becomes an emasculated psychological situation. There’s something wrong with the age,” he finished on a weak plea.