He felt vexed and disappointed that Hermann should have sent him back like a schoolboy with his exercise torn over.

Not immediately did he confess to himself that he was completely in the wrong.
"I'm doing the best I can," he said.

"It's rather discouraging." He moved his big shoulders slightly, as if to indicate that Hermann's hand was not wanted there.

Hermann kept it there.
"It might be discouraging," he said, "if you were doing your best." Michael's ill-temper oozed from him.
"I'm wrong," he said, turning round with the smile that made his ugly face so pleasant.

"And I'm sorry both that I have been slack and that I've been sulky.