“And you found I could reason too,” interrupted Sir Isaac in a kind of miniature shout, “you found I could reason too!”
“You think——Reason! I won’t,” said Lady Harman, and found herself in tears. By an enormous effort she recovered something of her dignity and withdrew. He made no effort to open the door, but stood a little hunchbacked and with a sense of rhetorical victory surveying her retreat.
§11
After Lady Harman’s maid had left her that night, she sat for some time in a low easy chair before her fire, trying at first to collect together into one situation all the events of the day and then lapsing into that state of mind which is not so much thinking as resting in the attitude of thought. Presently, in a vaguely conceived future, she would go to bed. She was stunned by the immense dimensions of the row her simple act of defiance had evoked.
And then came an incredible incident, so incredible that next day she still had great difficulty in deciding whether it was an actuality or a dream. She heard a little very familiar sound. It was the last sound she would have expected to hear and she turned sharply when she heard it. The paper-covered door in the wall of her husband’s apartment opened softly, paused, opened some more and his little undignified head appeared. His hair was already tumbled from his pillow.
He regarded her steadfastly for some moments with an expression between shame and curiosity and smouldering rage, and then allowed his body, clad now in purple-striped pyjamas, to follow his head into her room. He advanced guiltily.
“Elly,” he whispered. “Elly!”
She caught her dressing-gown about her and stood up.
“What is it, Isaac?” she asked, feeling curiously abashed at this invasion.
“Elly,” he said, still in that furtive undertone. “Make it up!”