“You talk very cleverly--more so than any other woman I ever knew. But you should pick your strong phrases with more discrimination. For instance, when you want to produce a really striking effect upon me, it is unwise to use an expression which recalls to me at once things that you would rather I didn’t think about. I wouldn’t say ‘_my_ dead ’ if I were you, especially when you are talking to his brother. It may do for outsiders, but here in the family it is a bad waste of words.” Her only answer was a gust of sobs. They failed to move him and he went on: “I don’t know that I have any means of forcing you to do anything, or say anything, against your will. If you take that position, perhaps it won’t be necessary. The wicked, ridiculous thing you thought, or pretended to think, and said to that poor girl, can be straightened out very easily. We can’t prevent the pain it has already caused, but we can stop its causing more. But if you lisp it to another human being--well, I don’t know what to threaten you with. It isn’t easy to guess what considerations will weigh with a woman who has your ideas of wifely duty, and of her responsibilities towards young and foolish members of her husband’s family, and----” “How _can_ you be so cruel, so mean, John? What right have you to talk to me like that? Everybody attacks me like an enemy. You never have been decent to me since I was married. Your whole family has treated me like an outsider, almost a criminal, since I came here. Your old cat of an aunt never looked at me except to wish me evil. Your brother--yes, if he could hear me now, from where he lies, I would say it!--never was fond of me, never tried to make a companion of me, never treated me as a wife should be treated, or even as his intellectual equal. _You_ avoided me as if I were poison. The neighborhood disliked me, gossiped about me, and I hated them. Only one there was of you all who was pleasant with me, and good to me--and now that you have turned him against me, too, you come and insult me because I was pleased and grateful for his friendship. That is _manly_ isn’t it?”