He resumed: “This brings us to my self-charge of cruelty. I told her that while we were on the subject I wished to state that her friends took out the greater part of their sensibility in talk; and she instantly flew at me, although behind her eyes I saw the suspicion she fought down. She said her friends have a great power of belief, a tremendous generosity; and as to critical taste--well, then, if their judgments weren’t to be accepted, where were we for a criterion? I replied to what I saw behind her eyes; I said she’d better go in search of Mapes, then--that as his praise was so whole-hearted a session with him might make her feel better. As for me, I told her, I never got the feeling of sincerity in anything he said. She positively quailed. She might have been seeing a ghost. She begged me not to say such a thing. But I had stopped thinking solely of her. I insisted that he wasn’t an honest man, that he hadn’t an honest eye, and that anyone could tell by his voice that he was sly. She reminded me that he had nothing to gain. But she was at the moment arguing with her intelligence, I knew, trying to bolster her spirit which might turn to water. I was a cheap fellow to say to her ‘I have still to discover what he stands to gain’.” He tilted back, his hands clasped behind his head, and stared at the ceiling. Now that she was not before him, to exasperate him by her swift changes of mood, to bewilder him by her illogical veering with the wind of her fancies and the shifting winds of her friends’ fancies, he fell into a state of belated compassion. At this moment she must have seemed to him, as always she did to me, a bewildered creature who was hag-ridden, who could neither take care of herself nor bend her neck to the care of another. It was at this moment that the telephone rang. His face turned white. With all the ringing that this particular telephone did, interrupting talks between them with its insistent summons to the outside world, he still, at this moment, feared. I heard the reedy voice over the wire: “Miss Litchfield in?” “She’s out,” he responded gruffly. “Is this Miss Litchfield’s husband?” came the squeal of Eva’s agent’s secretary. His laughter making his response almost gay, he agreed to this. “Can you take a message for Miss Litchfield?” He said that he could be trusted with a message. “Will you tell Miss Litchfield, please, that it’s all right about the Hollywood contract?” “I’ll tell her as soon as she comes in.” With great care he replaced the instrument on its stand, and again leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. He said quietly: “You heard? That’s what she means to do.”