"I should do as I like."
"I begin to suspect you'd try to. Let me put the case in another way. What would you want to leave this house and never re-enter it again?"
"Twenty thousand pounds."
"Is that your lowest figure?"
"It is."
"Thank you. I will give the matter my careful consideration. In the meanwhile may I ask you to leave me for a time? My conversational powers soon become exhausted; with them I am apt to become exhausted too. A little rest might do you good."
"Listen to me. I came here so that you and I might understand each other."
"We have gone some distance in that direction, haven't we?"
"I don't think you have, or you wouldn't talk to me like that. It may be clever, and cutting, and that kind of thing, but I don't like it. I'm your wife, your equal, more than your equal, since you're lying there like a log, already more than three parts dead. I'm the mistress of this house; this room is as much mine as yours."
"Is it?"