you
wander in from the bathroom with lather all over your face, and shout,
'Seen my brown pants?'"

"Huh!" He did not sound impressed. He made no answer. He turned out of
bed, his feet making one solid thud on the floor. He marched from the
room, a grotesque figure in baggy union-pajamas. She heard him drawing
a drink of water at the bathroom tap. She was furious at the
contemptuousness of his exit. She snuggled down in bed, and looked
away from him as he returned. He ignored her. As he flumped into bed he
yawned, and casually stated:

"Well, you'll have plenty of privacy when we build a new house.

"When?"

"Oh, I'll build it all right, don't you fret! But of course I don't
expect any credit for it."

Now it was she who grunted "Huh!" and ignored him, and felt independent
and masterful as she shot up out of bed, turned her back on him,
fished a lone and petrified chocolate out of her glove-box in the
top right-hand drawer of the bureau, gnawed at it, found that it had
cocoanut filling, said "Damn!" wished that she had not said it, so that
she might be superior to his colloquialism, and hurled the chocolate
into the wastebasket, where it made an evil and mocking clatter among
the debris of torn linen collars and toothpaste box. Then, in great
dignity and self-dramatization, she returned to bed.

All this time he had been talking on, embroidering his assertion that
he "didn't expect any credit." She was reflecting that he was a rustic,
that she hated him, that she had been insane to marry him, that she had
married him only because she was tired of work, that she must get her
long gloves cleaned, that she would never do anything more for him,
and that she mustn't forget his hominy for breakfast. She was roused to
attention by his storming:

"I'm a fool to think about a new house. By the time I get it built
you'll probably have succeeded in your plan to get me completely in
Dutch with every friend and every patient I've got."

She sat up with a bounce. She said coldly, "Thank you very much for
revealing your real opinion of me. If that's the way you feel, if I'm
such a hindrance to you, I can't stay under this roof another minute.
And I am perfectly well able to earn my own living. I will go at once,
and you may get a divorce at your pleasure! What you want is a nice
sweet cow of a woman who will enjoy having your dear friends talk about
the weather and spit on the floor!"

"Tut! Don't be a fool!"

"You will