Marie took upon her shoulders most of the laundering.  Osborn said “Clever kid” when he knew, but it did not impress him much; his feeling about it was vague.  Did he not work all day himself?  All this fiddling donkey-work with which women occupied themselves at home—­he dismissed it.  Always, when he returned, by the dining-room fire, in an easy chair and a decent frock, sat Marie, sweet and leisured.  It was evident that her household duties did not overcome her.

And all day the flat was desolately quiet.  How queer women’s lives were!  They grew up, looking infantilely upon men, and reading about them in fairy tales.  One day a pretty girl became engaged to one of them.  What congratulations!  What importance, delight!  What prospects!  What planning!  What roses!  The pretty girl then married one of them, the dearest and best of them, and began to wash dishes.  Her heart, which had never been perplexed before, grew very perplexed.  Her little purse, which had never been so very hungry before, now hungered for things, simple things, matinees, and sweets and blouses.  She stayed all day in a flat, desolately quiet, waiting for one moment when the dearest and best came home.

How queer women’s lives were!

* * * * *

When Osborn was going to dine with Rokeby at his club he told Marie about it just as she was stretching a reluctant foot out of her bed into the cold of a grey December morning, and an extraordinary rebellion rose in her with sirocco-like fierceness.  She got out of bed without replying, clutched at her dressing-gown and dragged it on, while Osborn’s drowsy voice continued, “Desmond asked me, and I thought I would; he wasn’t sure if you’d mind—­if you’d think it rather often.  But I told him you weren’t that sort; I told him you were a sport.  You’ll do something nice this evening, won’t you, darling?  What’ll you do?”

“What is something ’nice’?” said Marie, staring at her face, which looked wan and cold, in the glass.

“I don’t know,” said Osborn.

“Nor do I!” she cried angrily.  “Life’s just one slow, beastly grind.”  She ran out of the room to light the geyser, and tears were streaming down her face, and sobs rising one upon the other in her heart.  She sank upon the one bathroom chair, leaned her head against the wall and wept helplessly.  Her body was shaken with her crying; never in her life had she so cried before.  She felt as if she must collapse under its violence.

She thought:  “Osborn’s going out to dinner, and I can mope and starve at home.”

With the sub-conscious dutifulness of woman she realised that her bath was ready; that she must hurry, that there was breakfast to make, and the dining-room to sweep, and ... and ... what a string of tragic drabnesses!  Obeying this instinct of duty in her, she got, still sobbing, into the bath, and her tears fell like rain into the hot water.  A man would have cried, “Damn the bath!  Damn the breakfast!  Damn the brooms and dusters!  Scrap ’em all!” And for the while he would straightway have scrapped them and felt better.  But Marie went miserably on, as her mother and her grandmother and all those tired women in the Tube had done times out of number, for the sisterhood of woman is a strange thing.