'm," he rejoined.

"Maybe you'd be telling me what you did the like of that for?"

"Because," said he, "I'm a man and not a mouse. Because I don't want to
be at the beck and call of every dog and devil that has a bit more money
than I have--a man has got to be a man sometimes," he growled.

"Sure, you're telling the truth," said his wife, nodding her head at him.
"A man should be a man sometimes. It's the pity of the world that he
can't be a man always: and, indeed, it's the hard thing for a woman to
tell herself that the man she has got isn't a man at all, but a big fool
with no more wit than a boy."

Now this was the first time he had found his wife take trouble lying
down. As a rule she was readier for a fight than he was. She jumped
into a row with the alacrity of a dog: and the change worked on him. He
looked at her listless hands, and the sight of those powerful organs
hanging so powerlessly wrought on him. Women often forget that their
weakness is really their strength. The weakest things in the world are
by a queer paradox always the strongest. The toughest stone will wear
away under the dropping of water, a mushroom will lift a rock on its
delicate head, a child will make its father work for it. So the too
capable woman will always have a baby to nurse, and that baby will be her
husband. If she buttress her womanhood too much she saps his manhood.
Let her love all she can and never stint that blessing, but a woman
cannot often be obeyed and loved at the same time. A man cannot obey a
woman constantly and retain his self-respect: the muscles of his arms
reproach him if he does, and the man with his self-respect gone is a man
with a grudge, he will learn to hate the agent who brought him low. A
day may come when he will rise and beat her in self-defence, with his
fists if he is sufficiently brutalised, some subtler, but no less
efficient, weapon if his manhood refuses to be degraded--and this was our
case. His wife had grabbed the reins and driven the matrimonial coach:
driven it well, that is true, but the driver, by right of precedent, had
sat by hurt and angry, and at last, in an endeavour to prove his manhood
among men, he had damned his employer's self and work, although in
reality all his fury was directed against the mother of his children. He
threw up his work, and the semi-conscious thought that went home with him
was--"Now she will be sorry. If she must do everything let her earn the
bread."

The w