“If I were a man, I would not, for mere chivalry’s sake, let a woman treat me like a troublesome dog. You want a sound thrashing.”
“I’d like to see anybody thrash me,” said Jane, rising again and displaying her formidable person erect. Then she burst into tears, and said, “I won’t have such things said to me in my own house. How dare you?”
“You deserve it for being jealous of me,” said Agatha.
Jane’s eyes dilated angrily. “I!—I!—jealous of you!” She looked round, as if for a missile. Not finding one, she sat down again, and said in a voice stifled with tears, “J—Jealous of YOU, indeed!”
“You have good reason to be, for he is fonder of me than of you.”
Jane opened her mouth and eyes convulsively, but only uttered a gasp, and Agatha proceeded calmly, “I am polite to him, which you never are. When he speaks to me I allow him to finish his sentence without expressing, as you do, a foregone conclusion that it is not worth attending to. I do not yawn and talk whilst he is singing. When he converses with me on art or literature, about which he knows twice as much as I do, and at least ten times as much as you.” (Jane gasped again) “I do not make a silly answer and turn to my neighbor at the other side with a remark about the tables or the weather. When he is willing to be pleased, as he always is, I am willing to be pleasant. And that is why he likes me.”
“He does NOT like you. He is the same to everyone.”
“Except his wife. He likes me so much that you, like a great goose as you are, came up here to watch us at our duets, and made yourself as disagreeable as you possibly could whilst I was making myself charming. The poor man was ashamed of you.”
“He wasn’t,” said Jane, sobbing. “I didn’t do anything. I didn’t say anything. I won’t bear it. I will get a divorce. I will—”
“You will mend your ways if you have any sense left,” said Agatha remorselessly. “Do not make such a noise, or someone will come to see what is the matter, and I shall have to get down from the piano, where I am very comfortable.”