How could she go on? (She paused in her thoughts to survey and follow her maid, who was calling for the second time.) Though he hung upon her least word or wish and was content to see her at her pleasure, to run her errands and be ever deferential and worshipful, still she could not like him, could barely tolerate him. Before her always now was Vivian with his brooding eyes and elusive, sensitive smile; Vivian, who had never a penny to bless himself with. She could see him now striding to and fro in his bare studio, a brush in one hand, or sitting in his crippled chair meditating before a picture or talking to her of ways and means which might be employed to better their state. The pathos! “_I cannot endure that perfume, Olga!_” In part she could understand her acceptance of Harry after Vivian (only it did not seem understandable always, even to her), for in her extreme youth her parents had been so very poor. Perhaps because of her longings and childish fears in those days she had been marked in some strange way that had eventually led her to the conviction that wealth was so essential. For her parents were certainly harassed from her sixth to her thirteenth years, when they recovered themselves in part. Some bank or concern had failed and they had been thrown on inadequate resources and made to shift along in strange ways. She could remember an old brick house with a funereal air and a weedy garden into which they had moved and where for a long time they were almost without food. Her mother had cried more than once as she sat by the open window looking desolately out, while Ulrica, not quite comprehending what it was all about, had stared at her from an adjacent corner. “_Will madame have the iris or the Japanese lilac in the water?_” She recalled going downtown once on an errand and slipping along shyly because her clothes were not good. And when she saw some schoolgirls approaching, hid behind a tree so they should not see her. Another time, passing the Pilkington at dinner-time, the windows being open and the diners visible, she had wondered what great persons they must be to be able to bask in so great a world. It was then perhaps that she had developed the obsession for wealth which had led to this. If only she could have seen herself as she now was she would not have longed so. (She paused, looking gloomily back into the past.) And then had come the recovery of her father in some way or other. He had managed to get an interest in a small stove factory and they were no longer so poor—but that was after her youth had been spoiled, her mind marked in this way.