of the things we've talked about. I can say I am
going away, don't you see, but I couldn't say I'd go away--_unless_ ...
I couldn't use that threat to extort things from you without killing our
whole life dead. Can't you see that?"

His mind infuriated him by agreeing with her--goaded him into another
passionate outburst during which he accused her of bad faith, of being
tired of him, anxious to get away from him--seizing pretexts. But he
offered no more compromises. The thing he fell back on after that was a
plea for delay. The question must be decided coolly; not like this. Let
them just put it out of their minds for a while, go on with the old
routine as if nothing threatened it and see if things didn't work
somewhat better--see if they weren't, after all, better friends than she
thought.

"If I were ill, Roddy," she said, "and there was an operation talked
about; if they said to you that there was something I might drag along
for years, half alive, without, but that if I had it, it would either
kill or cure, you wouldn't urge delay. We'd decide for or against it and
be done. It's--it's taking just all the courage I've got to face this
thing now that I am excited--now that I've thought it out and talked it
out with you--now that I've got the big hope before my eyes. But to wait
until I was tangled in the old routine and the babies began to get a
little older and more--human, so that they knew me, and then do it in
cold blood! I couldn't do that. We'd patch up some sort of a life,
pretending a little, quarreling a little, and when my feelings got
especially hurt about something, I'd try to make myself think, and you,
that I was going away. And we'd both know down inside that we were
cowards."

He protested against the word, but she stuck to it.

"We're both afraid now," she insisted. "That's one of the things that
makes us so cruel to each other when we talk--fear. The world's a
terrible place to me, Roddy. I've never ventured out alone in it; not a
step. A year ago, I don't think I'd have been so frightened. I didn't
know then--I'd never really thought about it--what a hard dangerous
thing it is, just to earn enough to keep yourself alive. I haven't any
illusions now that it's easy--not after the things I've heard Barry Lake
tell about. But sometimes I think you're more afraid than I; and that
you've got a more intolerable thing to fear--ridicule--an intangible
sort of pitying ridicule that you can't get hold of;