Adam brings Kate the letter

Adam takes the afternoon train and lays the lawyers' letter on Kate's account book. She offers to be bought off for forty-five thousand, accuses him of a trick, then of being advised by the Chinaman, and warns him about the old sheriff's standing order to run her out of the county if she ever uses his name. Adam wants nothing: Charles left her the money without strings, and he is not a thief. For a moment he catches her looking afraid of him. Leaving, he tells her what he has just worked out — she knows the ugliness in men and cannot believe there is anything else, so she is only part of a human, like a man who cannot see green and does not know it. When the door shuts she finds herself beating her fists on the oilcloth and crying. With two hours to wait, Adam calls on Liza among her photographs and Tom's foul-mouthed parrot; she asks him to visit Tom, who she thinks is lonely. At the Chop House Will says something is the matter with Tom.

Adam wins the argument by not wanting anything, the one move Kate has no answer to; her tears afterwards are the first thing she does without calculation. The second half lowers the temperature deliberately — a parrot swearing at a tiny old woman, a rib steak, a sign on a gate — and uses small talk to plant Tom's trouble and Dessie's plan.