"Gretchen," he said coldly, "get up and put on your hat and coat and go out that door and never come back!" Her mouth fell slightly ajar. "But I don't want to get out," she said dazedly. "Well, then, behave yourself." And he added in a gentler voice: "I thought you were going to sleep for this forty days." "Oh, yes," she cried bitterly, "easy enough to say! But I'm tired of sleeping." She got up, faced him defiantly. "And what's more, I'm going riding with George Tompkins to-morrow." "You won't go out with him if I have to take you to New York and sit you down in my office until I get through." She looked at him with rage in her eyes. "I hate you," she said slowly. "And I'd like to take all the work you've done and tear it up and throw it in the fire. And just to give you something to worry about to-morrow, I probably won't be here when you get back." She got up from the sofa, and very deliberately looked at her flushed, tear-stained face in the mirror. Then she ran up-stairs and slammed herself into the bedroom. Automatically Roger spread out his work on the living-room table. The bright colors of the designs, the vivid ladies--Gretchen had posed for one of them--holding orange ginger ale or glistening silk hosiery, dazzled his mind into a sort of coma. His restless crayon moved here and there over the pictures, shifting a block of letters half an inch to the right, trying a dozen blues for a cool blue, and eliminating the word that made a phrase anæmic and pale. Half an hour passed--he was deep in the work now; there was no sound in the room but the velvety scratch of the crayon over the glossy board. After a long while he looked at his watch--it was after three. The wind had come up outside and was rushing by the house corners in loud, alarming swoops, like a heavy body falling through space. He stopped his work and listened. He was not tired now, but his head felt as if it was covered with bulging veins like those pictures that hang in doctors' offices showing a body stripped of decent skin. He put his hands to his head and felt it all over. It seemed to him that on his temple the veins were knotty and brittle around an old scar. Suddenly he began to be afraid. A hundred warnings he had heard swept into his mind. People did wreck themselves with overwork, and his body and brain were of the same vulnerable and perishable stuff. For the first time he found himself envying George Tompkins's calm nerves and healthy routine. He arose and began pacing the room in a panic. "I've got to sleep," he whispered to himself tensely. "Otherwise I'm going crazy." He rubbed his hand over his eyes, and returned to the table to put up his work, but his fingers were shaking so that he could scarcely grasp the board. The sway of a bare branch against the window made him start and cry out. He sat down on the sofa and tried to think. "Stop! Stop! Stop!" the clock said. "Stop! Stop! Stop!"