"What are you interested in, then?" Dr. Green looked angrily at the pretty creature who listened unmoved to his harangue. "I spoke to you, Eleanor. I asked you what you are interested in?" Eleanor rose, tall and slim, and looked at him across the untidy office. It seemed to her that he knew about Richard and that he was mocking her. "That is my own affair." Dr. Green rose also and for an instant the two faced one another, eye meeting eye. "Eleanor," he announced distinctly, "if you ever speak to me like that again, I shall punish you." Eleanor measured the distance to the door, her eye creeping along the floor. Then she looked back at Dr. Green. He had turned pale, the fine, severe line of his forehead and cheek were outlined plainly against the dark woodwork of the door behind him. "I am going home," said Eleanor. Dr. Green stepped between her and the door. "You can't go like this!" said he earnestly. "I can go any way I choose," said Eleanor. "You have no authority over me. I know perfectly well what is in your mind when you threaten me. It has been coming to me slowly for a long time, but I was too dull to understand until to-day." Dr. Green still stood before the outer door. A deep red rose from neck to forehead. "Your mother and I had very little in common," said he at last. Then, after a long pause, "She has had every comfort, she has not suffered, she has lived exactly the quiet, domestic, undisturbed life she wanted to live." Still Eleanor said nothing. "And she has had you." Eleanor made a tiny motion with her hand. "All my boyhood I starved for learning. When I finished my college course and was about to enter the medical school, I found myself carried away. I had starved myself in other ways. I had known no women. Your mother was very pretty. I blame myself entirely. But she couldn't see any necessity for my going on. She was satisfied with things as they were. I had ambitions; she--" Dr. Green did not finish his sentence, but it was impossible not to know what was in his mind. "I gave her all I had to leave me free to go on, and that, with what she had from her father, was enough for her to live on. She went away. _But she didn't tell me about you!_" Dr. Green's hands clenched. "We had had hard times, but I didn't deserve that! I found her here by mere chance. She had even taken another name! But I don't wish to cast any blame on her." "I don't want to hear anything said against her," said Eleanor bluntly. "I am not going to say anything against her," protested Dr. Green, "except that she has had the easier part." "I don't see that," said Eleanor. She went rapidly toward the door. "You will go away from Waltonville?" "Yes." "Where would you like to go?" "Where I can get work, teaching or something of that kind." "Eleanor!" cried Dr. Green. She paused, her hand on the knob. "If you have any feeling for me at all, you won't even make it necessary for me to tell you what I'm going to do."