'An impossible condition.'
'You treat me very harshly. How have I deserved it? When I wrote that, I really wished to please you. Of course, I knew you were dissatisfied with me, and it made me dissatisfied with myself. I wrote in a way that ought to have brought me a very different answer. Why do you behave as if I were guilty of something—as if I had put myself at your mercy? You never found fault with me—you even encouraged me to go on——'
Her choking voice made Harvey look at her in apprehension, and the look stopped her just as she was growing hysterical.
'You are right about my letter,' he said, very gravely and quietly. 'It ought to have been in a kinder tone. It would have been, but for those words you won't explain.'
'You think it needs any explanation that I dislike the thought of Hughie going to Mrs. Abbott's?'
'Indeed I do. I can't imagine a valid ground for your objection.'
There was a word on Alma's tongue, but her lips would not utter it. She turned very pale under the mental conflict. Physical weakness, instead of overcoming her spirit, excited it to a fresh effort of resistance.
'Then,' she said, rising from the chair, 'you are not only unkind to me, but dishonest.'
Harvey flushed.
'You are making yourself ill again. We had far better not talk at all.'