“You! Aren’t you friends with me? Didn’t I share her with you? Isn’t she my work too? What would you say if I came to your house and saw your work, your life work that she’d made possible, your pictures that are her, all her—and slashed them with a knife? What would you do if I’d done that, if I’d cut it to ribbons, your _Spring Song_?” That moved him. I saw a sort of comprehension lighting his stubborn face. The artist in her touched the artist in him. Of what lay behind the artist he had no knowledge. But he said, quite humbly— “Anita, I’m sorry!” Yet I knew that he was not sorry for what he had done. “Sorry! Sorry! Much good your sorrow does!” she shrilled, and I saw him stiffen again. She was strange. She valued him, that was so plain, and yet, it almost seemed in self-defence, she was always at her worst with him. “Sorry! It was the key of the book. You’ve spoilt my book.” “Nita! Nita! One letter!” Miss Howe was almost comical in her dislike of the scene. “As if you couldn’t pull it off without that.” She pulled her aside, lowering her voice—“Nita, what’s the use of a row? Pull yourself together. Put yourself in his place. Besides—you can’t afford——” She looked at Kent significantly. Anita’s pale glance followed her and so their eyes met again. She was angry and sullen and irresolute. Another woman would have been near tears. “Kent,” she began. And then—“Kent—if we quarrel——We’re too old to quarrel——If you had a shadow of excuse——” He waited. She took fire again because he did not meet her half way. “But if you think you’ve stopped me——” she cried. She broke off with a laugh and a new idea—“As if,” she said slowly and scornfully, “as if Madala would have cared!” He said distinctly— “You didn’t know her. You’d never understand——” “Ah,” she said, pressing forward to him, “why do you take that tone? What is it I don’t understand? If you’d help me with what you know, it could be big stuff. I’d forgive you for the letter if you’d work with me.” She hung on his answer. But he only said, not looking at her, in the same tone— “You’d never understand.” And then, with an effort—“I’ll go, Anita. I’m going. I’d better go.” Without waiting for her answer he went across the room to the little sofa near me where the hats and coats lay piled. I heard him fumbling for his things. But Anita went back to the others. The watching group seemed to open to receive, to enclose her. Her head had touched the lamp as she passed under it, and set it swaying wildly, so that I could scarcely see their faces in that shift of light and shadow through the thickened air. But I heard her angry laugh, and her voice overtopping the murmur—“Mad! He was always mad! If he weren’t such an old friend——” And then the Baxter girl’s voice—“Think of the sketches there must be!” And Miss Howe—“What I say is—you don’t want to quarrel!” And hers again—“Did you hear him? _I_ not understand Madala! Mad, I tell you! If I don’t know Madala——”