t hinder our
getting on. And there's no prospect of doing anything different from
this all the days of our life--"

"But, look-y here, Lydia, that's the way things _are_ in this world! The
men have to go away the first thing in the morning--and all the rest of
what you say! _I_ can't help it! What do you come to me about it for?
You might as well break out crying because I can't give you eyes in the
back of your head. That's the way things are!"

Lydia made a violent gesture of unbelief. "That's what everybody's been
telling me all my life--but now I'm a grown woman, with eyes to see, and
something inside me that won't let me say I see what I don't--_and I
don't see that_! I don't _believe_ it has to be so. I can't believe it!"

Paul laughed a little impatiently, irritated and uneasy, as he always
was, at any attempt to examine too closely the foundations of existing
ideas. "Why, Lydia, what's the matter with you? You sound as though
you'd been reading some fool socialist literature or something."

"You know I don't read anything, Paul. I never hear about anything but
novels. I never have time for anything else, and very likely I couldn't
understand it if I read it, not having any education. That's one thing I
want you to help me with. All I want is a chance for us to live together
a little more, to have a few more thoughts in common, and, oh! to be
trying to be making something better out of ourselves for our children's
sake. I can't see that we're learning to be anything but--you, to be an
efficient machine for making money, I to think of how to entertain as
though we had more money than we really have. I don't seem really to
know you or live with you any more than if we were two guests stopping
at the same hotel. If socialists are trying to fix things better, why
shouldn't we have time--both of us--to read their books; and you could
help me know what they mean?"

Paul laughed again, a scornful, hateful laugh, which brought the color
up to Lydia's pale face like a blow. "I gather, then, Lydia, that what
you're asking me to do is to neglect my business in order to read
socialist literature with you?"

His wife's rare resentment rose. She spoke with dignity: "I begged you
to be serious, Paul, and to try to understand what I mean, although I'm
so fumbling, and say it so badly. As for its being impossible to change
things, I've heard you say a great many times that there are no
conditions that can't be changed if pe