"Absolutely." Garrett looked up from his paper. "I think you must see, Harry, that we are quite justified in our demands—Clare has put it quite plainly."
"Quite," said Harry. "And you, Robin?"
"I think that Aunt Clare is perfectly right," answered Robin coldly.
Harry's face was very white. He spoke rapidly and his hand gripped the marble of the mantelpiece; he did not want them to see that his legs were trembling.
"Yes. I am glad to know exactly where we stand. It is better for all of us. I might have taken it submissively, Clare, had you left out your last count against me. That was unworthy of you. But haven't you, perhaps, seen just a little too completely your own point of view and omitted mine? I came back a stranger. I was ready to do anything to win your regard. I was perhaps a little foolishly sentimental about it, but I am a very easy person to understand—it could not have been very difficult. I imagined, foolishly, that things would be quite easy—that there would be no complications. I soon found that I had made a mistake; you have taught me more during the last fortnight than I had ever learnt in all my twenty years abroad. I have learnt that to expect affection from your own relations, even from your son, is absurd—affection is bad form; that, of course, was rather a shock.
"You have had, all of you, your innings during the last fortnight. You have decided, with your friends, that I am impossible, and from that moment you have deliberately cut me. You have driven me to find friends of my own and then you have complained of the friends that I have chosen. That is completed—in a fortnight you have shown me, quite plainly, your position. Now I will show you mine. You have refused to have anything to do with me—for the future the position shall be reversed. I shall alter in no respect whatever, either my friendships or my habits. I shall go where I please, do what I please, see whom I please. We shall, of course, disguise our position from the world. I have learnt that disguise is a very important part of one's education. Our former relations from this moment cease entirely."
He was speaking apparently calmly, but his anger was at white-heat. All the veiled insults and disappointments of the last fortnight rose before him, but, above all, he saw Mary as though he were defending her, there, in the room. He would never forgive them.
Clare was surprised, but she did not show it. She got up from the table and walked to the door. "Very well, Harry," she said, "I think you will regret it."
Garrett rose too, his hand trembling a little as he folded his newspaper.
"That is, I suppose, an ultimatum," he said. "It is a piece of insolence that I shall not forget."