"Mr. Attlebury can't prevent me from being miserable. Whenever I complain of anything, you want to send me to Mr. Attlebury!"
"I'm not ashamed of suggesting that you could find help in what he represents on earth."
She gave a faint plaintive moan. Was heaven as well as this great world to be marshalled against her, a poor little creature asking only to be free? So it seemed.
"Or am I to gather that you have become a sceptic?" The sarcasm was heavily marked. "Has a mind like yours the impudence to think for itself?" So she translated his words—and thereby did him no substantial injustice. If his intellect could bend the knee, was hers to be defiant?
"I had hoped," he went on, "that our great sorrow would have made a change in you."
The suggestion seemed to her to be hitting below the belt. She had seen no signs of overwhelming sorrow in him.
"Why?" she asked sharply. "It made none in you, did it?"
"There's no need to be pert."
"When you say it to me, it's wisdom. When I say it to you, it's pertness! Yes, that's always the way. You're perfect already—I must change!"
"This is becoming a wrangle. Haven't we had enough of it?"