looked at him with offended surprise--almost as she might have
regarded an insolent servant.

"What right have you to question me in such a tone?"

"Never mind my tone, but answer me."

"What right have you to question me at all?"

"Every right, so long as you choose to remain in my house."

"You oblige me to remind you that the house is at least as much mine as
yours. For what am I beholden to you? If it comes to the bare question
of rights between us, I must meet you with arguments as coarse as your
own. Do you suppose I can pretend, now, to acknowledge any authority in
you? I am just as free as you are, and I owe you no account of myself."

Physical exhaustion had made her incapable of self-control. She had
anticipated anything but such an address as this with which Elgar
presented himself. The insult was too shameless; it rendered impossible
the cold dignity she had purposed.

"What do you mean by 'free'?" he asked, less violently.

"Everything that you yourself understand by it. I am accountable to no
one but myself. If I have allowed you to think that I held the old
belief of a woman's subjection to her husband, you must learn that that
is at an end. I owe no more obedience to you than you do to me."

"I ask no obedience. All I want to know is, whether it is possible for
us to live under the same roof or not."

Cecily made no reply. Her anger had involved her in an inconsistency,
yet she was not so far at the mercy of blind impulses as to right
herself by taking the very course she had recognized as impossible.

"That entirely depends," added Elgar, "on whether you choose to explain
your absence last night."

"In other words," said Cecily, "it can be of no significance to me
where you go or what you do, but if you have a doubt about any of my
movements, it at once raises the question whether you can continue to
live with me or not I refuse to admit anything of the kind. I have
chosen, as you put it, to remain in your house, and in doing so I know
what I accept. By what right do you demand more of me than I of you?"

"You know that you are talking absurdly. You know as well as I do the
difference."

"Whatever laws I recognize, they are in myself only. As regards your
claims upon me, what I have said is the simple truth. I owe you no
account. If you are not content with this, you must form whatever
suppositions you will, and act as you think fit."

"That is as much as telling me that our married lif