The truth was that Helen got on his nerves frightfully with her silence and dutifulness and patience. The impeccable wife is a difficult proposition, if you tackle it. Cutter instinctively avoided the issue. He accepted Helen for this awfully “better” woman than he had bargained for. There was none of that human “worse” in her, so amply provided for in the marriage ceremony, with which to vary the monotony of their life together. Often he wished for a stormy scene, such as by nature married people are entitled to have. If he was irritable, she left him alone. If he was calm, she would come and sit and sew a fine seam in a sweet silence that was perfectly maddening. If he flung the paper he was reading on the floor, slammed his feet down and groaned, she would look up at him, then drop her eyes once more to this seam--or she would rise and leave the room noiselessly. Good heavens! He could not stand it, meaning “her.” Why didn’t she complain that he neglected her? Why didn’t she say something, show some spirit? Why didn’t she appeal to his conscience? That was what a wife was for--one thing, at least. If she would only show some fight, he might regain control of himself; as it was, he was slipping. Why couldn’t she see that and stop him? He really wanted to slow up; but how was a man to do it with his wife letting him go like this? Cutter was the kind of man who would eventually account for his transgression by saying if he had married another sort of woman he might have been a better man. In that case, you may be sure, if his wife had married a totally different kind of man, she would have been a happier woman. Meanwhile Helen was prepared for the worst. This is a terrific preparation, but sometimes the only one a woman can make; and it leaves her in a singularly placid state of mind. If she had understood the situation, she might have behaved differently. But she did not understand Cutter. The woman who knows only one man never knows much about him. To understand a husband, you must do a lot of collateral reading of mankind. He is all of them, from the best to the worst. You are not so apt then to be mystified by his various manifestations. And if you have any sense of the proper courage of your sex, you will act according to his symptoms, not your own sanity, even if it is to burst into tears and cry: “Undone! Undone! Oh, my God!” He will fall for it and react every time; because God, upon whom you have just called, no doubt having your emergencies in view, has created men so that almost without exception they have no defense against a weeping woman.