"You know he kicks up these rows almost every night, and you humour every one of his whims as if it were the first one. Don't you ever get tired?"
"Of course I do, but I can't let my child suffer even if it is only from fear. You haven't any patience, Oliver. Don't you remember the time when you used to be afraid of things?"
"I was never afraid of the dark in my life. No sensible child is, if he is brought up properly."
"Do you mean I am not bringing up my children——" Her tears choked her and she could not finish the sentence.
"I don't mean anything except that you are making an old woman of yourself before your time. You've let yourself go until you look ten years older than——"
He checked himself in time, but she understood without his words that he had started to say, "ten years older than Abby." Yes, Abby did look young—amazingly young—but, then, what else had she to think of?
She lay down, but she was trembling so violently that she sat up quickly again in order to recover her self-possession more easily. It seemed to her that the furious beating of her heart must make him understand how he had wounded her. It was the first discussion approaching a quarrel they had had since their marriage, for she, who was so pliable in all other matters, had discovered that she could become as hard as iron where the difference related to Harry.
"You are unjust, Oliver. I think you ought to see it," she said in a voice which she kept by an effort from breaking.
"I'll never see it, Jinny," and some dogged impulse to hurt her more made him add, "It's for Harry's sake as well as yours that I'm speaking."
"For Harry's sake? Oh, you don't mean—you can't really mean that you think I'm not doing the best for my child, Oliver?"