"Where have you been since yesterday afternoon?" he asked, when he had slammed the door.
Cecily looked at him with offended surprise—almost as she might have regarded an insolent servant.
"What right have you to question me in such a tone?"
"Never mind my tone, but answer me."
"What right have you to question me at all?"
"Every right, so long as you choose to remain in my house."
"You oblige me to remind you that the house is at least as much mine as yours. For what am I beholden to you? If it comes to the bare question of rights between us, I must meet you with arguments as coarse as your own. Do you suppose I can pretend, now, to acknowledge any authority in you? I am just as free as you are, and I owe you no account of myself."
Physical exhaustion had made her incapable of self-control. She had anticipated anything but such an address as this with which Elgar presented himself. The insult was too shameless; it rendered impossible the cold dignity she had purposed.
"What do you mean by 'free'?" he asked, less violently.
"Everything that you yourself understand by it. I am accountable to no one but myself. If I have allowed you to think that I held the old belief of a woman's subjection to her husband, you must learn that that is at an end. I owe no more obedience to you than you do to me."