"Oh, it’s the way them rich people pick you up and then drop you that makes me sick! Who is _she_, anyway? An old----” "You shouldn’t say that!" said Mrs. Kennedy, severely. She was well enough used to bad language not to be shocked, but she was displeased. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said Angelica, "after all she’s done for you." "I don’t want her to do nothing for me. I want her to let me alone. Listen here--you wouldn’t stand up for her if you knew the way she talks about you. I had the two of them out the other day, and they were fighting about you all the time. _She_ said you was no good, and she guessed you’d stole things off her; but Mrs. G., she says no, you’re all right. Then _she_ says you’d make trouble in the house, and Mrs. G. says, ‘Well, ain’t there enough trouble there anyway? What do we care if we get a little more? _I_ want her back,’ she says. ‘All right,’ says the old lady, ‘have her, if you want her, but don’t kick if you find your hus----’” Angelica had grown scarlet. "My Gawd, what a lot you talk!" she said. "You better be starting home." He eyed her with resentment. "I’ll go!" he said. "Don’t you worry!" After Courtland had gone, Mrs. Kennedy attempted to reprove her daughter for her bad manners, but Angelica insisted autocratically that she must go to bed at once. "You shouldn’t get up at all," she told her mother. "The doctor said it wouldn’t hurt me--just around the flat." "Not at night! You’d ought to know better. You ought to be asleep by this time. Now, listen here, mommer!" she added firmly, as she saw signs of rebellion. "If you don’t do what I say, I’m not going to stay and take care of you. The doctor said _rest_. Well, this isn’t rest. You got to go to bed this instant!" So did she rid herself of the necessity for talking, for listening, for recognizing the external world. She was irritable at the very least disturbance; her joy had gone, and left a bitter impatience. Five days before she could go back to that enchanted house where Vincent lived, to be again under the same roof, sitting at the same table! Five days lost out of life, out of her best years! She was a little surprised and rather pleased at her own lack of morality. She really didn’t care a bit, didn’t feel in the least shocked or distressed, at loving a married man; nor did she hesitate for an instant at the prospect of going off with him. She believed that was what he meant; very well, she was ready! She would leave her poor little mother desolate, she would humiliate and affront the kindly Polly, she would leave Eddie overwhelmed by disgrace and grief, and still she didn’t care. She was deceiving her mother, deceiving Polly, shamefully deceiving Eddie, and she didn’t care. On the contrary, she was rather proud of it. She felt that such insolent wickedness had in it more than a little magnificence of the sort possessed by the magnificent women of the past.