"Yes, you'd be very glad to see me laid underground! I know that!" said Nathaniel, hugely enjoying this refreshing interlude. "Don't think I don't see through you! All the same, you women: money's all you're out for! Well, you won't get any of mine to waste on that young puppy, and that's flat!"
"All right!" said Paula, in the accents of a tragedienne. "Keep your money! But when you're dead I shall spend every penny you leave me on really immoral plays, and I shall hope that you'll know it, and hate it, and be sorry you were such a beast to me when you were alive!"
Nathaniel was so pleased by this vigorous response to his taunt that he forgot to be a cripple, and sat up quite straight in his chair, and said that she had better not count her chickens before they were hatched, since after this he would be damned if he didn't Make a Few Changes.
"Do as you please!" Paula said disdainfully. "I don't want your money."
"Oho, now you sing a different tune!" Nathaniel said, his eyes glinting with triumph. "I thought that that was just what you did want - two thousand pounds of my money, and ready to murder me to get it!"
"What are two thousand pounds to you?" demanded Paula, with poor logic, but fine dramatic delivery. "You'd never miss it, but just because you have a bourgeois taste in art you deny me the one thing I want! More than that! You are denying me my chance in life!"
"I don't care for that line," said Stephen critically.
"You shut up!" said Paula, rounding on him. "You've done all you can to crab Willoughby's play! I suppose your tender regard for me makes you shudder at the thought of my appearing in the role of a prostitute!"
"Bless your heart, I don't care what sort of a role you appear in!" replied Stephen. "All I beg is that you won't stand there ranting like Lady Macbeth. Too much drama in the home turns my stomach, I find."
"If you had a shred of decency, you'd be on my side!"