“I’m afraid it isn’t.” “I wish you wouldn’t be so high strung all the time, Cecily. I realize you’ve had a bad time lately; in fact, it seems to me you’ve had a bad time ever since we were married. But it does wear on me--this atmosphere of tragedy.” “Then why must we have it? It wasn’t like that when we were first married.” He took an impatient turn up and down the room. “No. But you can’t maintain a honeymoon attitude all your life, my dear. I don’t suppose we feel the same way towards each other as we did then.” That hurt. “But why don’t we?” “Why, we’re older; people’s emotions cool naturally.” “But they shouldn’t if they love one another.” “There you go, you see. You want to have everything your way. You want to force things. You don’t let life be natural, Cecily. You’re too romantic.” The tears in her eyes only irritated him. He went on, thinking that it might be as well to have it out with her. “I don’t want to be unkind, but you have the most artificial view of things sometimes. You can’t tolerate any thing or person that isn’t on a pedestal.” “No, it isn’t that, Dick. I just hate to see things slip into cheapness.” “But almost everything normal to you is cheap.” “No! All I want is to have you love me and the children--be content with us.” “You’re quite absurd, Cecily. I love the children as much as any man could. If it’s hard to love you it’s because you scare me off by frowning upon every harmless diversion--by wanting to shut us up together. That isn’t the way people live nowadays. Marriage isn’t prison. The trouble with us is that we aren’t congenial in our pursuits. You like one kind of thing. I like another. And you won’t admit my kind of thing at all.” “I don’t want marriage to be prison, but if marriage is anything surely it’s the concentration of two people on making a home and bringing up their children.” She couldn’t add love. “It’s a lot more than that nowadays, Cecily. I suppose that used to be all that was expected of a woman--having her children and keeping her house clean. Now things have broadened. Men need more, ask more; so do most women.” “I suppose,” said Cecily, coldly, “what you mean is that men want a lot of noise and dissipation and promiscuous flirtations, and that they expect their wives to tolerate and join them in such things.” The scorn in her voice drove Dick on. “Well, perhaps the woman who is willing to do that gets away with marriage better than the woman who clings to an outworn domesticity. I know your scorn of Della--and of girls like Della and Fliss. We aren’t any happier than Fliss and Matthew, or Della and Walter.” Cecily became purely instinctive. She burst into tears and tried to talk through them. “Then the fact that I have three children and they have none doesn’t make any difference to you?”