"When you had gone, I cried, and prayed; it didn't do any good. I didn't know women could suffer so--even when the children were born--" Osborn sprang up. "Don't," he said hurriedly, with visions of anguish in his mind. "Very well. I don't want to harrow you. I'm only just giving the explanation you asked. A year ago you left me, glad to go, and I thought my heart would break. But it didn't. And it's changed. You've come back--to exact again all the things that husbands do exact. But I don't want you." She had appalled him. He stammered hoarsely: "I don't understand--I can't see what you want us to do." "Well; to live--apart." "You can't mean it." "But I do. How often am I to say, I don't want you? The last part of this year, after the pain was over, I've been as glad to be without you as during the first part of the year you were glad to be without me. Isn't that plain?" "You're making it horribly plain. And now I'm going to ask you, could I help being poor and short of cash?" She shook her head. "No! But I couldn't either, and you were awfully down on me." "'Down' on you! _I!_" "You grumbled persistently every day. The kiddies and I just waited upon your moods. And if I had to ask for anything, you weren't kind about it; you just flung out of the place, leaving me all the worries. You never helped nor shared. I've come to this conclusion lately; that it simply isn't worth while living with a person who grumbles persistently and has to be propitiated every day." He reflected deeply, his hands in his trousers pockets. "I think I'm taking all this sermon peaceably enough," he barked savagely. Again he had that disaffected look from her; she seemed to analyse him coldly. "It isn't a sermon. Go on grumbling and nagging and grudging every day, if you want to. I haven't asked you to refrain. I've merely explained that, as a result of your husbandly behaviour, you've ceased to attract me, and I don't want to live with you--intimately--again." He caught her arm. "Look here! I know. You've been to some of these beastly Suffragette meetings." She laughed scornfully. "Suffragette! Don't be an ass, dear!" "No," he said under his breath, regarding her, "you haven't. Hanged if I know what you have been doing." "I told you. Getting my youth back. Do you know what a very pretty young girl feels like? Did you know what I used to feel like when you were engaged to me? Like a queen with a crowd of courtiers at her orders and you the most courtier-like of them all! You used to hang on every word I said and promise me heaven and earth, and my every look was law. Oh! the power a pretty young girl feels in herself!" Standing on tiptoe she looked into the glass, touched her fluffs of hair and the purple earrings with tender finger-tips.