"Don't shout," she said. "I think this is a queer time for you to talk like this, Laurence—it seems to me you ought to be thinking about the Judge."
"Ought!" he muttered. "Did you hear what I said?"
"Yes, I heard, Laurence. But—" She looked full at him now, her clear grey eyes very bright. "But I will not let you interfere with what I think right to do."
"You will not?... Don't you know that I'm master here, that you're bound to do as I say?"
Again the long lids veiled her eyes, and she stood without replying. And Laurence's heart was burning. This harsh assertion of authority had been wrong, it was not what he meant. He hated force. What good would anything forced from Mary do to him? What he longed for was a tender understanding—but if she would not understand, would not be tender, what could he do but rage?
At this point they were interrupted. Mrs. Lowell called to them from the sickroom, and Mary hurried to take charge there, without a word or look for her husband. Resentment smouldered in her mind, a feeling that Laurence was wrong, and, in addition, undignified. All the rest of the afternoon, busy as she was, and grieved too as she watched the Judge's stricken figure—all this time a turmoil of feeling about Laurence was going on below the surface of her mind. Never had she been so disturbed. This was the first really serious clash in the two years of their life together.
V
For the first time, her will and Laurence's were definitely, sharply opposed. Heretofore, each of them had yielded, in much that concerned the other, without a clear issue. She felt that she had yielded a good deal to Laurence. He had associates that she did not like, hard-drinking bachelors of the bar, with whom he spent an occasional convivial evening, coming back flushed and gay though never overcome. She did not like even his moderate drinking, nor the fact that he never went to church, that he took no interest in religion except to jest crudely about it. On the other hand, he had not, so far, tried to interfere openly with her interest in the church nor her association with Hilary in work, nor her taking up a course of reading in history and beginning to study Greek under Hilary's direction. He had acquiesced in her asking Hilary to supper a few times, as was her social duty, and had behaved with courtesy, though she knew he disliked "the preacher." He gave no good reason for his feeling, but he expressed it in gibes and bitter jokes about "sky-pilots," the fondness of women for priests, the power of "holiness," and so on. These expressions irritated Mary deeply, but she had passed them over in silence, withdrawing into herself and indicating to Laurence that she did not expect him to understand nor take any part in this interest of hers, any more than she could take part in his stag-suppers.