As if he had touched something and been burnt he very sharply drew in his breath. She said, “Ah, you’d be hurt, I told you. Dear, I can’t be other than I am on this. Upon her resignation, Harry. Men call it domesticity. That’s their fair word for their offence. It’s woman’s resignation is the fabric of the married state. She lets her home be built upon her back. She resigns everything to carry it. She has to. If she moves it shakes. If she stands upright it crashes. Dear, not ours. I’ve stood upright all the time. I’ve proved the fallacy. A woman can stand upright and yet be wife, be mother, make home. Dear, you are not to ask me now--for resignation.” Therein, and through all the passage of this place where the footway was uneven, the light not good, the quality of her voice was low and noteless, sometimes difficult to hear. There is to say it was by that the more assured, as is more purposeful in its suggestion the tide that enters, not upon the gale, but in the calm and steady flow of its own strength. The quality of Harry’s voice was very deep and sometimes halting, as though it were out of much difficulty that he spoke. He said, deeply, “That you stand upright does not discharge you from responsibilities.” She said, “Dear, nor my responsibilities discharge me from my privileges.” There was then a silence. He spoke, “But I am going to press this, Rosalie. I say, with all admitted, this thing--this ‘I could go but you should not go’--is different as between us. I am a man.” She made a movement in her chair. “Ah, let that go. I have a reply to that.” “What reply?” “I am a woman.” He began--“It’s nothing--.” She said, “Oh, painful to give you pain. To me--everything.” He got up from his position beside her and went to his chair and seated himself. He sat on the edge of the chair, bowed forward, his forearms on his knees, his hands clasped; not smoking; his pipe between his fingers, his eyes upon the fire. Once or twice, his hands close to his face, he slightly raised them and with his pipe-stem softly tapped his teeth. CHAPTER IX