"Yes, it matters, though of course you find it hard to believe."
"Very, when I remember the words with which you last parted from me. If I was hateful to you then, how am I less so now?"
"A man in anger, and especially one of my nature, often says more than he means. It was never you that were hateful to me, though your beliefs and your circumstances might madden me into saying such a thing."
"My beliefs, as I told you then, are a part of myself—are myself."
She said it with irritable insistence—an accent which would doubtless have been significant in the ears of Eleanor Spence.
"I don't wish to speak of that. Have you recovered your health, Miriam?"
"I am better."
He came nearer again, throwing his hat aside.
"Will you let me sit down? I've had a long journey in third-class, and I feel tired. Such weather as this doesn't help to make me cheerful. I imagined Naples with a rather different sky."
Miriam motioned towards a chair, and looked drearily from the window at the dreary sea. Neither spoke again for two or three minutes. Reuben Elgar surveyed the room, but inattentively.