“I ask you what’s my business got to do with you? It’s _my_ affair, _my_ side. You got no more right to go shoving your spoke into that than—anything. See? What do _you_ know of the rights and wrongs of business? How can _you_ tell what’s right and what isn’t right? And the things you came out with—the things you came out with! Why Charterson—after you’d gone Charterson said, she doesn’t know, she can’t know what she’s talking about! A decent woman! a _lady_! talking of driving girls on the street. You ought to be ashamed of yourself! You aren’t fit to show your face.... It’s these damned papers and pamphlets, all this blear-eyed stuff, these decadent novels and things putting narsty thoughts, _narsty dirty_ thoughts into decent women’s heads. It ought to be rammed back down their throats, it ought to be put a stop to!” Sir Isaac suddenly gave way to woe. “What have I _done_?” he cried, “what have I done? Here’s everything going so well! We might be the happiest of couples! We’re rich, we got everything we want.... And then you go harbouring these ideas, fooling about with rotten people, taking up with Socialism——Yes, I tell you—Socialism!” His moment of pathos ended. “NO?” he shouted in an enormous voice. He became white and grim. He emphasized his next words with a shaken finger. “It’s got to end, my lady. It’s going to end sooner than you expect. That’s all!...” He paused at the papered door. He had a popular craving for a vivid curtain and this he felt was just a little too mild. “It’s going to end,” he repeated and then with great violence, with almost alcoholic violence, with the round eyes and shouting voice and shaken fist and blaspheming violence of a sordid, thrifty peasant enraged, “it’s going to end a Damned Sight sooner than you expect.” CHAPTER THE EIGHTH Sir Isaac as Petruchio §1