"You wouldn't let me finish last night. I just wanted to tell you that I didn't—"
"I've no wish to hear another word." She stopped him, precisely as she had stopped him in the night. She was at the washstand.
"I should be obliged if you'd look at me when you speak to me," he reproached her manners. "It's only polite."
She turned to him with face flaming. They were both aware that his deportment was better than hers; and he perceived that the correction had abraded her susceptibility.
"I'll look at you all right," she answered, curtly and rather loudly.
He adopted a superior attitude.
"Of course I'm ill and weak," he said, "but even if I am I suppose I'm entitled to some consideration." He lay back on the pillow.
"I can't help your being ill," she answered. "It's not my fault. And if you're so ill and weak as all that, it seems to me the best thing you can do is to be quiet and not to talk, especially about—about that!"
"Well, perhaps you'll let me be the best judge of what I ought to talk about. Anyhow, I'm going to talk about it, and you're going to listen."
"I'm not."