offensive words of the quarrel to what had been the ground of it, she arrived at last at its origin. For a long while she could hardly believe that their dissension had arisen from a conversation so inoffensive, of so little moment to either. But so it actually had been. It all arose from his laughing at the girls’ high schools, declaring they were useless, while she defended them. He had spoken slightingly of women’s education in general, and had said that Hannah, Anna’s English protégée, had not the slightest need to know anything of physics.
This irritated Anna. She saw in this a contemptuous reference to her occupations. And she bethought her of a phrase to pay him back for the pain he had given her. “I don’t expect you to understand me, my feelings, as anyone who loved me might, but simple delicacy I did expect,” she said.
And he had actually flushed with vexation, and had said something unpleasant. She could not recall her answer, but at that point, with an unmistakable desire to wound her too, he had said:
“I feel no interest in your infatuation over this girl, that’s true, because I see it’s unnatural.”
The cruelty with which he shattered the world she had built up for herself so laboriously to enable her to endure her hard life, the injustice with which he had accused her of affectation, of artificiality, aroused her.
“I am very sorry that nothing but what’s coarse and material is comprehensible and natural to you,” she said and walked out of the room.
When he had come in to her yesterday evening, they had not referred to the quarrel, but both felt that the quarrel had been smoothed over, but was not at an end.