"I know!" she agreed quickly. "But we could get a house, we could buy a house, for less than we're paying here in rent. A very nice house. I wouldn't ask you to do it, if it cost any more than we're spending now. But—of course I don't know anything about such things—but I should think it would give you an advantage in business if you owned some property. Wouldn't—wouldn't it—make people put more confidence—" She faltered miserably at the look in his eyes, and before he could speak she had changed her tactics, laughing.
"I'm just trying to tease you into giving me something I want, and I know I'm awfully silly about it." She nestled closer to him, slipping an arm under his neck. "Oh, honey, it wouldn't cost anything at all, and I do so want to have a house to do things to. I feel so—so unsettled, living this way. I feel as if I were always sitting on the edge of a chair waiting to go somewhere else. And I'm used to working and—and managing a little money. I know it wasn't much money, but I liked to do it. You're letting a lot of perfectly good energy go to waste in me, really you are."
He laughed, tightening his arm about her shoulders, and for one deliriously happy moment she thought she had won. Then he kissed her, and before he spoke she knew she had lost.
"I should worry! You're giving me all I want," he said, and there was different delight in the words. She was satisfying him, and for the moment it was enough. He made the mistake of overconfidence in emphasizing a point already won and so losing it.
"And as long as I'm giving you three meals a day and glad rags, it isn't up to you to worry. I'll look after the finances if you'll take care of your complexion. It's beginning to need it," he added with brutality that defeated its own purpose. Even in her pain she had an instant of seeing him clearly and feeling that she hated him.
She slipped to her feet and stood trembling, not looking down at him.
"Well, that's settled, then," she said in a clear, hard little voice. "I'll go and dress. It's nearly noon."
She felt that her own anger was threatening the most precious thing in her life; she felt that she was two persons who were tearing each other to pieces. With a blind instinct of reaching out to him for help she turned at the dressing-room door. "I know you don't realize what you're doing to me—you don't realize—what you're throwing away," she said.
There was a cool amusement in his eyes.
"Well, but why the melodrama?" he asked reasonably. She stood convicted of hysteria and stupidity, and she felt again his superiority and his mastery over her.