His opposition to Fanny's maternal manner, directed at him, was stronger than customary; she seemed to accept in herself every responsibility for him; as though, whenever his actions were unfortunate, it had been due to her imperfect control. With practically no experience of life, guarded from its threatening aspects, her attitude was that, not without patience, she brought him with relative safety through a maze in which otherwise he'd be lost. This was evident now in what he felt to be the complacency of her voice and expression; and a perverse impulse grew in him to combat and shatter her blind satisfaction. Lee subdued this, in the merest decency; but the effort left him thoroughly irritated. He found, finally, an outlet for his annoyance in the restlessness of Helena; and he ordered her from the table. This show of paternal discipline Fanny met with lowered eyes and a silence that endured until Gregory had walked sedately from the room; then she reminded Lee that he must never, absolutely never, correct his children when he was in an ill temper. “That's nonsense,” he returned shortly; “you ought to see that because it's impossible. Even theoretically I don't agree with you--a child can understand a punishment in which there is some warmth. You are dealing with a little animal and not a reasonable being.” To this Fanny replied that her children were not animals. “Really, Fanny, you don't know what you are talking about,” he asserted; “we are all, men and women and children and giraffes, animals. You might look that up in the dictionary.” “I haven't any need to,” she observed, with a calmness that further tried him. “If the dictionary says that it isn't a very good one. And if you are trying to tell me that Helena and Gregory are no better than giraffes you're sillier than usual.” “That isn't in the least what I said,” Lee retorted, with widely separated words. “I wasn't speaking of the comparative but of the absolute. It is a fact that we are animals, more responsible and with greater powers than the others, but animals, animals.” “Then what is an animal?” Fanny demanded. “A mammal.” A marked expression of distaste invaded her. “It has a nasty sound,” she admitted with her instinctive recoiling from life. “I don't see how we got on this subject anyhow, it's too much like sex. It seems you are able to discuss nothing else.” “It is only nasty in your mind,” he declared. “That's exactly like you, you all over, to blame things on me. It's convenient, I must say, but not fair nor true: it was you who got in a wicked temper and sent Helena, who was feeling miserable, away.” “You always say the children are sick when they misbehave.” “I wish I could be as sure of you as I was of that,” she answered quickly; “for instance, when you go out in automobiles at the dances with women.” “Now, we are beginning,” he told her with emphasis; “we never had an argument that didn't degenerate into this; and I'm sick of it.”