When she said to him, ‘..maybe you could say them but just say them about Keltham attitudes instead of about dath ilan attitudes because I kind of have a grudge against your home planet's way of doing ethics right now‘, that was, actually, an effort to negotiate a communications protocol. Perhaps bracketed wrongly, perhaps she didn’t do the right meta-communication, perhaps it would have worked if instead of ‘maybe you could say’ she’d said ‘proposed communications protocol:’.

But she was trying. When he asked, she told him what he could do that would help her and not hurt to hear: she asked him to tell her what Keltham thought about her being raped, instead of what dath ilan had to say, because hearing what Keltham thought would help and hearing what dath ilan thought wouldn't.

He refused to do that, which, as she had predicted it would, hurt very badly, and she stopped, after that, trying to tell Keltham how to communicate with her in a way that hurt her less.

When she said to him, '...maybe you could say them but just say them about Keltham attitudes instead of about dath ilan attitudes because I kind of have a grudge against your home planet's way of doing ethics right now‘, that was, actually, an effort to negotiate a communications protocol. Perhaps bracketed wrongly, perhaps she didn’t do the right meta-communication, perhaps it would have worked if instead of ‘maybe you could say’ she’d said ‘proposed communications protocol:’.

But she was trying. When he asked, she told him what he could do that would help her and not hurt to hear: she asked him to tell her what Keltham thought about her being raped, instead of what dath ilan had to say, because hearing what Keltham thought would help and hearing what dath ilan thought wouldn't.

He refused to do that, which, as she had predicted it would, hurt very badly, and she stopped, after that, trying to tell Keltham how to communicate with her in a way that hurt her less.