“They are like women,” she answered.
He pondered awhile over this. He shook his head; after all he knew better and he was angry because he had been letting Addie lie to him.
“That is not true.”
She began to scream at him:
“So, that’s the way you begin, calling me a liar, is it?” She put her hands into her hair on either side and tore at it. This had even more of an effect upon Rugo than she had expected. He beat his hands together. In spoiling the perfect oval of her head, in ruinously shaking its smooth and parted hair, she had hurt him as much as if she had shaken a holy picture.
“No, no,” he cried. “I will do something, you shall see—it is all right—it is all right.” He approached her and, touching her shoulder with his hand, he added:
“For you I will do it—I will do it.”
She smiled. “You will do what, Rugo Amietieve?”
“I shall be less like a woman. You called me like a woman; well, you shall see.”
She came close to him, her two thin arms pressed close to her side.