I could not help hearing his words; but I would not look up to see her humiliation, and turned a leaf, as if intent on my author. After a moment she said, with slight but clear emphasis: "I can't agree with you." A little later she went to the piano; but I never heard her play so badly. A glance at Mr. Hearn revealed that his dignity and complacency had received a wound that he was inclined to resent. I strolled away muttering: "She has idealized him as she did Old Plod, but after all it's not a very serious foible in a man of millions." Before the day passed she found an opportunity to ask: "Why did you not tell me that Mr. Hearn had spoken to you approvingly of that paragraph?" "I would not willingly say anything to annoy you," I replied quietly. "Did you hear him call my attention to it?" "I could not help it." "You did not look up and triumph over me." "That would have given me no pleasure." "I believe you," she said, in a low tone; but she devoted herself so assiduously to the stately banker that he became benignness itself. I also observed that Mr. Yocomb looked in vain for the paper after tea. "I happened to destroy the copy," I said very innocently. CHAPTER XI POOR ACTING The last week that I proposed to spend at the farmhouse was passing quietly and uneventfully away. I was gaining steadily though not rapidly in physical strength, but not in my power to endure my disappointment with equanimity, much less with resignation. In the delirium of my fever I kept constantly repeating the words--so Mrs. Yocomb told me--"It's all wrong." Each successive day found these words on my lips again with increasing frequency. It seemed contrary to both right and reason that one should so completely enslave me, and then go away leaving me a bound and helpless captive. The conviction grew stronger that no such power over me should have been given to her, if her influence was to end only in darkening my life and crippling my power to be a forceful man among men. I felt with instinctive certainty that my burden would be too heavy to leave me the elastic spring and energy required by my exacting profession. A hopeful, eager interest in life and the world at large was the first necessity to success in my calling; but already I found a leaden apathy creeping over me which even the powerful motives of pride, and my resolute purpose to seem cheerful that she might go on to her bright future unregretfully, were not sufficiently strong to banish. If I could not cope with this despondency in its inception, how could I face the future?