“Can’t you forget what a souse says when he’s all to the bad? What’ll we do if you leave us flat? Do you think it’s a cinch to pick another like you? What’ll this bunch do? What’ll Creevy do, and Shunk? Look at this plant! I’ve got it for a year more. Do you know what our overhead costs me a week? Listen, Eris; have a heart. Don’t do that to us----” “It’s what _you’ve_ done, Mr. Smull, not I. You’ve spoiled any pleasure I might have had in working for you. I couldn’t go on here. I couldn’t do good work. When you told me, last evening, that I was out, you were right. I was out as soon as you said so. It was final.... Truth always is final.... I learned it last night.... There is nothing further to learn.” She walked slowly past him to the door and looked out across the great, barn-like place all littered with the lumber and canvas of half-demolished sets, tangles of insulated wires and cables, and sprawling batteries of lights of every sort. In the heated stillness of the place a light footfall echoed sonorously across the flooring. The chatter of intruding sparrows came from the arches overhead. Outside sunny windows ailanthus trees, intensely green, spread motionless fronds under the July sky. Eris moved on, slowly, to her dressing-room--a built-in affair with its flimsy partition adjoining the directors’ office. Chintz and paint had mitigated the bareness of the room with its extemporised dressing table and couch and a chair or two. For a while she was occupied with her make-up box; then, locking it, she opened her suitcase and began to lay away such articles as belonged to her. As she locked and strapped it, Smull appeared at her door, and she rose in displeasure, although the infraction of rule meant nothing to her now. “Your cheque,” he said, extending it. “Thank you, I don’t want it.” “It belongs to you.... You could hold me for the balance of the year if you chose, and not do a stroke of work.” Her short upper lip curled shorter in contempt: “I release you, Mr. Smull.” “I want you to take this, anyway----” “No.” “Please, Eris----” “_No!_” She picked up her suitcase and make-up box. But he continued to block the doorway. “Eris! Eris!” he stammered. “Don’t do this--don’t leave me! My God, my God!--I--can’t stand such--such cruelty----” His face was heavily flushed and his fat neck was swelling red behind the ears. He began to tremble and stammer again--“I’ll do anything you ask--give you anything--if you’ll only listen--Eris---- “Eris--my God, I want to marry you! I want you! I’ll keep away until I can get a divorce----” He caught her arm in his hot, red hands; suddenly clutched her body, crushing her face against his with an inarticulate cry as though strangling. And she fought him back, savagely, in silence, bruised, wild with the shame of it. Both chairs fell; he trod on one, crushing it to splinters, and his powerful shoulder tore the mirror from the wall and wrecked the dressing table with it.