"Nonsense! It isn’t. I know it isn’t. Let’s see. My dear, I’ll show you how to do a spinach _purée_. It’s delicious, and frightfully good for the blood. We’re all eating spinach almost every night now. Watch me!" Angelica was hungry and weary, but she profited to the full by this novel lesson in her great course of preparation. She watched, she questioned, she tried her own hand at it. Mrs. Russell praised her. "You’re very quick!" she said. "Now we’ll help Annie to put the dishes on the dumb-waiter; then we’ve just half a minute to wash and brush up." She led the way to her room, lively, cheerful, almost affectionate; and although Angelica knew how very uncertain and shallow this good-humour was, nevertheless it helped her. She had decided upon a step which dismayed her. She had decided to talk to Vincent--to reason with him, to threaten or to cajole him. He was the one danger, the one person she had to dread. No matter how carefully she went, he could in an instant destroy all that she had built up; he could really ruin her. She had been trying for a long time to devise some method for ensuring his silence, for gaining a little security. She had begun and torn up more than one letter. Now that they were once more under the same roof, she felt it a unique opportunity which she was too brave to shirk. She couldn’t go on, never feeling sure, never knowing what he would do, what he had done. She was startled to find Courtland sitting at the dinner-table; but as the others took him as a matter of course, she showed no surprise, although she was not at all pleased to be seated next to him. The doctor had an evening paper. "The news," he said, "isn’t good--not in Eddie’s section. He’s going to be just in the center of the line to oppose the next big drive." "Fiddlesticks!" said his wife. "You don’t know where he is, or where the next drive is coming. Only the _stuff_ you read in the papers!" "I use my brains, and I put two and two together----” "He doesn’t know himself where he is," said Vincent. "Most of the chaps don’t. They’re like driven sheep." "Of course they know!" said Mrs. Russell. "You don’t suppose they’re blindfolded, do you?" A loud and violent discussion followed, all three of them talking at once, under cover of which Angelica addressed her neighbour. "What are you doing up here?" "Just what you’re doin’," replied Courtland. "Eatin’ my dinner." She had no opportunity to say more to him, for Mrs. Russell peremptorily ordered him to fetch the car, and, after gulping down his pudding in sullen resentment, he left the table.