'It saves food,' she said with a bitter laugh, when Reardon once expressed surprise that she should be going again so soon.
'And gives you an opportunity of bewailing your hard fate,' he returned coldly.
The reproach was ignoble, and he could not be surprised that Amy left the house without another word to him.

Yet he resented that, as he had resented her sorrowful jest.

The feeling of unmanliness in his own position tortured him into a mood of perversity.

Through the day he wrote only a few lines, and on Amy's return he resolved not to speak to her.

There was a sense of repose in this change of attitude; he encouraged himself in the view that Amy was treating him with cruel neglect.