She murmured, “No, on her resignation, Harry.”
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.
He had called it the principle. She watched him.
That attitude in which he sat was of a profundity
of meditation not to be looked upon without that sense
of awe, of oppression, of misgiving that is aroused
by the suggestion in man or nature of brooding forces
mysteriously engrossed. There came to her, watching
him, a thought that newly disturbed her thoughts.
He had called it the principle. She had been
astonished but she had not been perturbed. Upon
the principle as between man and woman, husband and
wife, she was, as she had said, so strong, so confident,
accustomed and assured, that there was nothing could
be said could touch her there. But it was not
