unhappy. Your fencing tells me that it _is_ something which I have done
which has hurt you, and I insist upon knowing what it is."

"I shall not tell you," defiantly.

"I am very angry with you, Alathea," my voice was stern.

"I don't care!" hers was passionate.

"I think you are very rude."

"You have told me that before--well I am rude then! I will tell you
nothing. I will do nothing but just be your servant to obey orders which
relate to the work I have been engaged for."

I felt so furious I had to lie back in my chair and shut my eye.

"You have a very poor sense of a bargain, if you only keep it in the
letter. Your underneath constant hostility makes everything so
difficult, the inference of your whole attitude toward me, and of
everything you say and do, is that you feel injured, that you have some
grudge against me."

I tried to speak levelly.

"What on earth have I ever done to you except treat you with every
courtesy? Except that one day when you had the baby in your arms and I
was rude, but apologized, and that one other time when I kissed you, and
God knows I was sorry enough afterwards and have regretted it ever
since. What _is_ the reason of your attitude; it is absolutely unfair?"

This seemed to upset her considerably. She hated the idea that she was
thought unfair. It may have made her realize too that she _had_ a
definite sense of injury. She lost her temper, she stamped her scrap of
a foot.

"I hate you!" she burst out. "You and your bargain! I wish I was dead!"
and then she sank into the sofa and covered her face with her hands, and
by the shaking of her shoulders, I saw that she was crying!

If I had been cool enough to think then, I suppose I could have reasoned
that all this was probably most flattering to me, and an extra proof of
her state of mind, but the agitation it had plunged me into made me
unable to balance things, and I too allowed my temper to get the better
of me, and I got up as best I could and seizing my crutch, I walked
towards my bedroom door.

"I shall expect an apology," was all I said, and went in and left her
alone.

If we are to go on fighting like this, life won't be worth living!

I tried to calm myself and went in the window, but the servants came
into the room to make the bed, so I was forced to go back again to the
sitting-room. Alathea had gone into the little salon, I suppose, because
for the same reason, she could not have returned to her room. I sa