that day, perhaps, or the
impulse to paint stronger than usual. He threw down the papers and
exclaimed,--

"Let's quit, Milly, before it's too late!"

"What do you mean?"

And he made his plea, for the last time seriously, to take their lives
in their hands and like brave people walk out of the city-maze to
freedom, to a simple, rational life without pretence.

"I want to cut out all this!" he cried with passion, waving his hand
carelessly over the huddle of city roofs, "get into some quiet spot and
paint, paint, paint! until I make 'em see that I have something to say.
It's the only way to do things!"

With passionate vividness he saw the years of his youth and desire
slipping away in the round of trivial "jobs" in the city; he saw the
slow decay of resolves under the ever increasing demands to "make good"
by earning money. And he shrank from it as from the pit.

"I don't see why you say that," Milly replied. "Most painters live in
the city part of the year. There's ---- and ----"

She argued the matter with him long into the night, obstinately refusing
to see the fatality of the choice they were making.

"We can get rid of the apartment any time, if we don't want it," she
said, and quoted Hazel Fredericks.

They came nearer to seeing into each other's souls that night than ever
before or ever again. They saw that their inmost interests were
antagonistic and must always remain so for all the active, creative
years of their lives, and the best they could do, for the sake of their
dead ideals, much more for the sake of the living child, was decently to
compromise between their respective egotisms and thus "live and let
live."

"If I had married a plain business man," Milly let fall in the heat of
the argument, revealing in that phrase the knowledge she had arrived at
of her mistake, "it would have been different."

Bragdon was not sure of that, but he was sure that in so far as he could
he must supply for her the things that "plain business man" could have
given her. Or they must part--they even looked into that gulf, from
which both shrank back. At the end Milly said:--

"If you don't think it's best, don't do it. You must do what you think
is best for your career."

Such was her present ideal of wifely submission to husband in all
matters that concerned his "career," but she let him plainly perceive
that in saying this she was merely putting the responsibility of their
lives wholly upon his shoulders,