MihaElla ’s Reviews > The Odd Women > Status Update

[…] I could tell you stories about people—but you wouldn't care to hear them. Just take things with a laugh—we all have to. Life's as you take it: all gloom or moderately shiny.

“You are conscious of no difference?' she said.

'Months have lapsed. We are different because we are older. But you speak as if you were conscious of some greater change.'

'Yes, you are changed noticeably. I thought I knew you; perhaps I did. Now I should have to learn you all over again. It is difficult, you see, for me to keep pace with you. Your opportunities are so much wider.”

‘Why do you encourage that fear of your life coming to an end?'

'It's more a hope than a fear—at most times. I can see nothing before me. I don't wish to live.'

'That's morbid. It isn't yourself that speaks, but your trouble. You are young and strong, and in a year's time very much of this unhappiness will have passed.'

'I have felt it like a certainty—as if it had been foretold to me—ever since I knew—

She herself was no longer one of the ’odd women'; fortune had—or seemed to have—been kind to her; none the less her sense of a mission remained. No longer an example of perfect female independence, and unable therefore to use the same language as before, she might illustrate woman's claim of equality in marriage.—If her experience proved no obstacle.

‘But you have spoilt my life,you know.Such a grand life it might have been.Why did you come and interfere with me?And you have been so terribly obstinate.'

'Of course; that's my nature.But after all I have been weak.

'Yielding in one point that didn't matter to you at all? It was the only way of making sure that you loved me.

Barfoot laughed slightingly.
'And what if I needed the other proof that you loved me.

‘It is six o'clock,' said Everard, after a short silence. 'You remember your arrangement. At eight, down on the shore.'

'I should be much more comfortable in the armchair with a book.'

'Oh, you have had enough of books. It's time to live.'

'It's time to rest.'

'Are you so very tired? Poor girl! The day has been rather too much for you.’

We are unsuited to each other. We do not understand each other. Our marriage is physical and nothing more. My love—what is my love? I do not love her mind, her intellectual part. If I did, this frightful jealousy from which I suffer would be impossible. My ideal of the wife perfectly suited to me is far liker that girl at the public-house bar than Monica.

You don't love me,he continued in harsh,choking tones.You wish to be my friend. That's how you try to compensate me for the loss of your love.

He laughed with bitterness.

When you say that,do you ever ask yourself whether you try to make me love you? Scenes like this are ruining my health.I have come to dread your talk.I have almost forgotten the sound of your voice when it isn't either angry or complaining

‘You see,' he went on, 'I expected nothing, and happy for me that it was so. Miss Nunn was in her severest mood; I think she didn't smile once through the evening. I will confess to you I wrote her a letter whilst I was abroad, and it offended her, I suppose.

'I don't think you can always judge of her thoughts by her face.

‘Life will be a burden to me before long if I don't have more freedom.’

'Freedom?'

'Yes, I don't think there's any harm in saying that.'

‘Freedom?' He glared at her. 'I shall begin to think that you wish you had never married me.'

'I should only wish that if I were made to feel that you shut me up in a house and couldn't trust me to go where I chose.