"Yes. No," he added hastily, "I have one more thing to say to you, Jane-Ellen, and it's this. Don't make the mistake of fancying that I have taken this whole incident lightly. I don't. It really must not happen again. Understand that clearly." "You mean if that gentleman came back, you would dismiss me, sir?" "I think I would," he answered. "Even if it weren't my fault?" "Was the fault entirely his, Jane-Ellen?" "Ask him, sir." "You know much more about it than he does. Was the fault entirely his?" The cook wriggled her shoulders, crumpled her apron and seemed unwilling to answer a direct question directly. At last an idea occurred to her. She looked up brightly. "It was the ice-cream, sir," she said. "I was trying to teach him how to freeze ice-cream slowly. It ought to be done like this." And bending over an imaginary freezer, she imitated with her absurdly small hand the suave, gentle, rotary motion essential to the great American luxury. As he stood looking down on her, it seemed to Crane extraordinarily clear how it had all happened, so clear indeed that for a second it almost seemed as if he himself were in the place of the culprit whose conduct he had just been condemning. He stepped back hastily. "No, Jane-Ellen," he said, "it was not all his fault. Of that you have convinced me." She stretched out her hand to the door. "Will that be all, sir? The cook, you know, has to get up so very early in the morning." He tried to counteract the feeling of pity and shame that swept over him at the realization that this young and delicate creature had to get up at dawn to work for him and his guests. The effort made his tone rather severe as he said: "Yes, that's all. Goodnight." "Good night, sir," she answered, with her unruffled sweetness, and was gone. He stood still a moment, conscious of an unusual alertness both of mind and emotion. And that very alertness made him aware that at that moment there was a man in his kitchen against whom he felt the keenest personal animosity. Crane would have dearly liked to go down and turn him out, but he resisted the impulse, which somehow savored of Tucker in his mind. And what, by the way, had Tucker been doing in the kitchen? And Smithfield, why had Smithfield tried to interfere with his seeing the cook? He found plenty of food for reflection. Among other things he had to consider his return to the drawing-room. Looking at his watch he observed that a longer time had elapsed since he left it than he had supposed. There would be comments, there would be attempted jokes from Tucker. Well, that would be easily met by a question as to Tucker's own interest in the culinary art. Mrs. Falkener's methods of attack were not subtle, either. But Cora--he wished Cora would not just look at him as if he had done something cruel.