She seemed to shrivel up beneath the coldness of his argument. She said, doggedly: "I'm not going to give way, Kenneth." They both looked at each other then, quite calmly and subconsciously a little awed, as if they could see suddenly the brink on which they were standing. "Helen, I don't want to domineer over you at all. I want you to be as free to do what you like as I am. But there are some things, which, for my sake and for the sake of the position I hold here, you ought not to do. And having Smallwood here alone when I am away is one of those things." "I don't agree. I have as much right to make a friend of Smallwood as you have to make a friend of--say Clare!" The mention of Clare shifted him swiftly out of his cool, calculating mood and back into the mood which had possessed him when he first came into the room. "Not at all," he replied, sharply. "The cases are totally different. Smallwood is a boy--a boy in my House. That makes all the difference." "I don't see that it makes any difference." "Good heavens, Helen!--You don't see? Don't you realise the sort of talk that is getting about? Doesn't it occur to you that Smallwood will chatter about this all over the school and make out that he's conducting a clandestine flirtation with you? Don't you see how it will undermine all the discipline of the House--will make people laugh at me when my back's turned--will--" "And I'm to give up my freedom just to stop people from laughing at you, am I?" "Helen, _why_ can't you see my point of view? Would you like to see me a failure at Lavery's? Wouldn't you feel hurt to hear everybody sniggering about me?" "I should feel hurt to think that you could only succeed at Lavery's by taking away my freedom." "Helen, marriage isn't freedom. It's partnership. I can't do what I like. Neither can you." "I can try, though." "Yes, and you can succeed in making my life at Millstead unendurable." She cried fiercely: "I won't talk about it any longer, Kenneth. We don't agree and apparently we shan't, however long we argue. I still think I've a right to ask Smallwood in to tea if I want to." "And I still think you haven't." "Very well, then--" with a laugh--"that's a deadlock, isn't it?" He stared at the fire silently for some moments, then rose, and came to the back of her chair. Something in her attitude seemed to him blindingly, achingly pathetic; the tears rushed to his eyes; he felt he had been cruel to her. One part of him urged him to have pity on her, not to let her suffer, to give way, at all costs, rather than bring shadows over her life; to appeal, passionately and perhaps sentimentally, that she would, for his sake, if she loved him, make his task at Lavery's no harder than it need be. The other part of him said: No, you have said what is perfectly fair and true; you have nothing at all to apologise for. If you apologise you will only weaken your position for ever afterwards.