"Yes, an epithala-mium!" repeated Hortense, with an outburst of jarring laughter. "Isn't she absurd! Isn't she ridiculous!" "Is she? Why, it seems to me a delicate attention, a very sweet thought." If Carolyn could make anything out of Amy--and of George--why, let her do it. "You _like_ her poetry!" cried Hortense in a high, strained voice. "You enjoy her epithalamiums, and her--sonnets...." Cope flushed and began to grow impatient. "She is a sweet girl," he said; "and if she wishes to write verse she is quite within her rights." "'Sweet'! There you go again! 'Sweet'--twice. She ought to know!" "Perhaps she does know. Everybody else knows." "And perhaps she doesn't!" cried Hortense. "Tell her! Tell her!" Cope stared. "She is a sweet girl," he repeated; "and she has been filling very discreetly a somewhat difficult position----" He knew something of the suppressed bitterness which, in subordinate places, was often the lot of the pen. He found himself preferring, just here, "pen" to "typewriter": he would give Carolyn a touch of idealization--though she had afflicted him with a heavy stroke of embarrassment. "'Difficult position'?" shrilled Hortense. "With Aunt Medora the very soul of kindness? I like that! Well, if you want to rescue her from her difficult position, do it. If you admire her--and love her--tell her so! _She'll_ be grateful--just read those sonnets over again!" Hortense dropped her palette and brushes and burst into outrageous tears. Cope sat bolt upright in that spacious chair. "Tell her? I have nothing to tell her. I have nothing to tell anyone!" His resonant words cut the air. They uttered decision. He did not mean to make the same mistake twice. Hortense drew across her eyes an apron redolent of turpentine and stepped toward the throne. "Nothing? Why this sudden refuge in silence?" she asked, almost truculently, even if tremulously. "You usually find enough words--even though they mean little." "I'm afraid I do," he admitted cautiously. "You have nothing to tell anyone? Nothing to tell--me?" Cope rose. "Nothing to tell anyone," he repeated. "Nothing." "Then let me tell you something." There was an angry thrill in her voice. "For I am not so selfish and cold-hearted as you are. I have seen nobody but you all these months. I have never tried harder to please anybody. You have scarcely noticed me--you have never given me a glance or a thought. You could interest yourself in that silly Amy and in our foolish Carolyn; but for me--me--Nothing!" Cope came down from the throne. If she had lavished her maiden thoughts on him, by day or evening or at night, he had not known and could hardly be supposed to know. Indeed, she had begun by treating him with a cursory roughness; nor had he noticed any great softening later on.