Am I a baby only, Grizel ?" "I think it is childish of you," she replied, "to say you are a brute." "There is not to be even that satisfaction left to me! You are hard on me, Grizel." "I am trying to help you.

How can you be angry with me ?" "The instinct of self-preservation, I suppose.

I see myself dwindling so rapidly under your treatment that soon there will be nothing of me left." It was said cruelly, for he knew that the one thing Grizel could not bear now was the implication that she saw his faults only.

She always went down under that blow with pitiful surrender, showing the woman suddenly, as if under a physical knouting.
He apologized contritely.

"But, after all, it proves my case," he said, "for I could not hurt you in this way, Grizel, if I were not a pretty well-grown specimen of a monster." "Don't," she said; but she did not seek to help him by drawing him away to other subjects, which would have been his way.