"It's war, this is!" thought Edwin.
He was afraid; he was even intimidated by her anger; but he did not lose his courage. The determination to fight for himself, and to see the thing through no matter what happened, was not a bit weakened. An inwardly feverish but outwardly calm vindictive desperation possessed him. He and she would soon know who was the stronger.
At the same time he said to himself:
"I was hasty. I ought not to have acted in such a hurry. Before doing anything I ought to have told her quietly that I intended to have the last word as regards furniture in this house. I was within my rights in acting at once, but it wasn't very clever of me, clumsy fool!"
Aloud he said, with a kind of self-conscious snigger:
"What's too much?"
Hilda went on:
"You simply make me look a fool in my own house, before my own son and the servants."
"You've brought it on yourself," said he fiercely. "If you will do these idiotic things you must take the consequences. I told you I didn't want the furniture moved, and immediately my back's turned you go and move it. I won't have it, and so I tell you straight."
"You're a brute," she continued, not heeding him, obsessed by her own wound. "You're a brute!" She said it with terrifying conviction. "Everybody knows it. Didn't Maggie warn me? You're a brute and a bully. And you do all you can to shame me in my own house. Who'd think I was supposed to be the mistress here? Even in front of my friends you insult me."