“If you had been a man,” said Mrs. Chater, speaking with a slow and extraordinary bitterness—“if you had been a man, you would have come out and helped me.”
“But you had got out when I came to the window, my dear.”
“With the cabman, I mean.” Mrs. Chater fired the word with alarming ferocity. “With the cabman. Did you not see that violent brute insulting me?”
It was precisely because he had observed the episode that Mr. Chater had kept well behind the curtain; but he did not adduce the fact.
“I certainly did not,” he affirmed.
“Ah! I expect you took precious good care not to. You've done the same thing before. Never to my dying day shall I forget the figure you cut outside Swan and Edgar's last Christmas. Making me—”
Mr. Chater implored: “Oh, my dear, don't drag that up again!”
“But I do drag it up!” Mrs. Chater a little unnecessarily cried. “I do drag it up, and I shall always drag it up—making me a fool as you did! I was ashamed of you. I was—”
Mr. Chater nervously wiped his moist palms with his pocket handkerchief: “I've told you over and over again, my dear, that I never understood the circumstances. There was a great crowd, and I was very much pushed about. If I had known the circumstances—”
Mrs. Chater hurled back the word at him: “Circumstances!”