She had meant to tell him as a matter of course. But something in his tone roused her fatal spirit of perversity—and up went her chin into the air.
"We were striking a bargain. Have you any objection?"
"No. Not the smallest. Would it be any use if I had?"
She paused, weighing the question.
"I don't think it would. Petty tyranny of that kind is the last thing
I could put up with; the last thing one would expect from you."
"Quite so. At the same time—marriage means compromise. You understand?"
"When a man says that he usually implies that the woman will do most of the compromising, in order that he may have his own way."
"Within limits, a man has a certain right to his own way in his own house."
"And generally gets it!" she answered lightly.
Lenox shrugged his shoulders, and going over to the easel, contemplated in silence the living likeness of his friend: while Quita, watching him, was increasingly aware of slumbering electricity that might at any moment break into a lightning-flash of speech.