He stopped on the stairs abruptly. “Really, I think you must be mad,” he said.
“I dare say I am,” she answered.
How poorly she held her own in a quarrel! It was always so with her. Why could she not be careful of her words, and answer so as to wound him, crush him altogether?
He stood with one hand on the stair-rail and said:
“So you think it pleases me to have things going on like this? I tell you it hurts me desperately—has done for a long time past.”
“And me,” she answered. “But now I'll have no more of it.”
“Oh, indeed! You've said that before. You said it only a week ago.”
“Well, I am going now.”
He looked up at her.
“Going away?”