Now, in real life things don't happen quite like this. What the
quarrel in real life suffers from is want of system. There is no
order, no settled plan. There is much too much go-as-you-please
about the quarrel in real life, and the result is naturally pure
muddle. The man, turning things over in the morning while shaving,
makes up his mind to have this matter out and have done with it. He
knows exactly what he is going to say. He repeats it to himself at
intervals during the day. He will first say This, and then he will
go on to That; while he is about it he will perhaps mention the
Other. He reckons it will take him a quarter of an hour. Which will
just give him time to dress for dinner.
After it is over, and he looks at his watch, he finds it has taken
him longer than that. Added to which he has said next to nothing--
next to nothing, that is, of what he meant to say. It went wrong
from the very start. As a matter of fact there wasn't any start. He
entered the room and closed the door. That is as far as he got. The
cigarette he never even lighted. There ought to have been a box of
matches on the mantelpiece behind the photo-frame. And of course
there were none there. For her to fly into a temper merely because
he reminded her that he had spoken about this very matter at least a
hundred times before, and accuse him of going about his own house
"stealing" his own matches was positively laughable.
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