"What part were you playing ?" "What part do you think ?" "Have n't I told you I gave it up, long ago ?" Angela stood with her back to the fire, looking at him; her hands were locked behind her.
"Did it ever strike you that my position at Baden was a charming one ?--knowing that I had been handed over to you to be put under the microscope--like an insect with a pin stuck through it!" "How in the world did you know it?
I thought we were particularly careful." "How can a woman help knowing such a thing?
She guesses it--she discovers it by instinct; especially if she be a proud woman." "Ah," said Bernard, "if pride is a source of information, you must be a prodigy of knowledge!" "I don't know that you are particularly humble!" the girl retorted.

"The meekest and most submissive of her sex would not have consented to have such a bargain as that made about her--such a trick played upon her!" "My dearest Angela, it was no bargain--no trick!" Bernard interposed.
"It was a clumsy trick--it was a bad bargain!" she declared.

"At any rate I hated it--I hated the idea of your pretending to pass judgment upon me; of your having come to Baden for the purpose.

It was as if Mr.
Wright had been buying a horse and you had undertaken to put me through my paces!" "I undertook nothing--I declined to undertake." "You certainly made a study of me--and I was determined you should get your lesson wrong.

I determined to embarrass, to mislead, to defeat you.
Or rather, I did n't determine; I simply obeyed a natural impulse of self-defence--the impulse to evade the fierce light of criticism.