"Well, after all the evil I have done, I wanted to make some atonement. I was involved in the sinking of I don't know how many ships, and I wanted to take some part in building others. So when I met you and you told me that women could build ships, too, you wakened a great hope in me, and an ambition. I wanted to get out in the yards and swing a sledge or drive a riveting-gun." "With those hands?" He laughed and reached for them. She put them out of sight back of her as one removes dangerous toys from the clutch of a child, and went on: "But you wouldn't let me. So I took up the next best thing, office work. I studied that hateful stenography and learned to play a typewriter." "It keeps you nearer to me." "But I don't want to be near you. I want to build ships. Please let me go out in the yard. Please give me a real job." He could not keep from laughing at her, at such delicacy pleading for such toil. His amusement humiliated her and baffled her so that at length she said: "Please go on home. It's getting late, and I don't like you at all." "I know you don't like me, but couldn't you love me?" "That's more impossible than liking you, since you won't let me have my only wish." "It's too brutal, I tell you. And it's getting too cold. It would simply ruin your perfect skin. I don't want to marry a longshoreman, thank you." "Then I'll thank you to go on home. I'm tired out. I've got to get up in the morning at the screech of dawn and take up your ghastly drudgery again." "If you'll marry me you won't have to work at all." "But work is the one thing I want. So if you'll kindly take yourself off I'll be much obliged. You've no business here, anyway, and it's getting so late that you'll have all the neighbors talking." "A lot I care!" "Well, I care a lot," she said, blandly belying her words to Abbie. "I've got to live among them." It was a miserable ending to an evening of such promise. He felt as sheepish as a cub turned out of his best girl's house by a sleepy parent, but he had no choice. He rose drearily, fought his way into his overcoat, and growled: "Good night!" She sighed "Good night!" and wished that she were not so cantankerous. The closing of the door shook her whole frame, and she made a step forward to call him back, but sank into a chair instead, worn out with the general unsatisfactoriness of life, the complicated mathematical problem that never comes out even. Marriage is a circle that cannot be quite squared. She sat droopily in her chair for a long while, pondering mankind and womankind and their mutual dependence and incompatibility. It would be nice to be married if one could stay single at the same time. But it was hopelessly impossible to eat your cake and have it, too.