"Isabel, be careful what you say."
"No, I shan't be careful. I am tired of being careful and of considering your feelings, when you never show the slightest consideration for mine. You are hard and cold and selfish—that is what you are—and it is time you knew it! You never really loved me; you admired me, because I was showy, and you thought that a showy wife would help you in your career; but you never loved me as a woman—only as one of the steps by which you could mount to success."
Paul's face was very white. "How dare you say such things to me?"
"Because I think them. You are precious careful, forsooth, for fear people should talk about me, because you think such talk is in some measure derogatory to you; but you are pretty careless as to what you say to me, as you know that whatever you say, it will be none the worse for yourself. You only care for me and my reputation as an adjunct to your own importance."
"If you were a man, I should say you lied."
"Oh! no, you wouldn't. You dare not say half the nasty things to a man that you say to me."
"If you had been a man I should have silenced you long ago."
By this time Isabel was very angry with herself, and consequently ten times angrier with Paul; so she continued recklessly: "As long as you only thought I liked the other men better than you, you didn't care; it was only when you began to think I was bringing discredit on you, that you thought it necessary to make such a fuss".
"Isabel, once for all listen to me." Paul's voice was so ominously quiet that a wiser woman—or even a foolish woman who was not in a temper—would have taken warning; but Isabel possessed the dangerous gift of a vivid imagination; and what was once humorously said of faith may be literally said of imagination, namely that "it makes people believe what they know to be false".
"I won't listen to you and I won't be dictated to by you," she retorted, goading herself to still further fury by her own words; "if you had your own way, you would make a perfect slave of me, and trample me under foot. But I won't stand it."