'My dear, I assure you that I was at the rehearsal all day. The girls don't know their music yet, and it puts me out in my stage arrangement. I give you my word that is all I heard or saw to-day. I've nothing to conceal from you.' 'You're a liar, and you know you are!' Blows and shrieks followed. 'I shall pull that woman's nose off; I know I shall!' 'I give you my word, my dear, that I've been the whole day with Montgomery and Harding cutting the piece.' 'Cutting the piece! And I should like to know why I'm not in that piece. I suppose it was you who kept me out of it. Oh, you beast! Why did you ever have anything to do with me? It's you who are ruining me. Were it not for you, do you think I should be drinking? Not I--it was all your fault.' Dick made no attempt to answer. He was very tired. Kate continued her march up and down the room for some moments in silence, but he could see from the twitching of her face and the swinging of her arms that the storm was bound to burst soon. Presently she said: 'You go and get me something to drink; I've had nothing all this evening.' 'Oh, Kate dear! I beg of--' 'Oh, you won't, won't you? We'll see about that,' she answered as she looked around the room for the heaviest object she could conveniently throw at him. Seeing how useless it would be to attempt to contradict her in her present mood, Dick rose to his feet and said hurriedly: 'Now there's no use in getting into a passion, Kate. I'll go, I'll go.' 'You'd better, I can tell you.' 'What shall I get, then?' 'Get me half a pint of gin, and be quick about it--I'm dying of thirst.' Even Dick, accustomed as he was now to these scenes, could not repress a look in which there was at once mingled pity, astonishment and fear, so absolutely demoniacal did this little woman seem as she raved under the watery light of the lodging-house gas, her dark complexion gone to a dull greenish pallor. By force of contrast she called to his mind the mild-eyed workwoman he had known in the linen-draper's shop in Hanley, and he asked himself if it were possible that she and this raging creature, more like a tiger in her passion than a human being, were one and the same person? He could not choose but wonder. But another scream came, bidding him make haste, or it would be worse for him, and he bent his head and went to fetch the gin. In the meantime Kate's fury leaped, crackled, and burnt with the fierceness of a house in the throes of conflagration, and in the smoke-cloud of hatred which enveloped her, only fragments of ideas and sensations flashed like falling sparks through her mind. Up and down the room she walked swinging her arms, only hesitating for some new object whereon to wreak new fury. Suddenly it struck her that Dick had been too long away--that he was keeping her waiting on purpose; and grinding her teeth, she muttered: 'Oh, the beast! Would he--would he keep me waiting, and since nine this morning I've been alone!'