60
CRAIG’S WIFE
- Harriet married—she didn’t marry you. You simply went with the house—as a more or less regrettable necessity. And you must not obtrude; for she wants the house all to herself. So she has set about reducing you to as negligible a factor as possible in the scheme of things here.
Craig
- You don’t really believe that, Auntie, do you?
Miss Austen
- That is her plan concerning you, Walter, I’m telling you. That is why the visits of your friends have been discouraged.
Craig
- I can’t think that Harriet would discourage my friends, Auntie.
Miss Austen
- Does any of them come here?
Craig
- Why, most of them have been here at one time or another, yes.
Miss Austen
- Not within the last eighteen months; and you’ve only been married two years.
Craig
- Well, why shouldn’t Harriet want my friends here?
Miss Austen
- For the same reason that she doesn’t want anybody else here. Because she’s a supremely selfish woman; and with the arrogance of the selfish mind, she wants to exclude the whole world—because she cannot impose her narrow little order upon it. And these four walls are the symbol of that selfish exclusion.
