“Just before I left home,” she went on in the same calm quiet, “a girl showed me some verses written by a very wicked man. At least, they say he is very wicked--at any rate, he is in jail. I thought the verses horrible and brutal; but now I think the man must be very wise. I remember a few lines, and they seem to me to mean Manley. “For each man kills the thing he loves-- Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word; The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword. “I don't remember all of it, but there was another line or two: “The kindest use a knife, because The dead so soon grow cold. “I wish I had that poem now--I think I could understand it. I think--” “I think you've got talking hysterics, if there is such a thing,” Kent interrupted harshly. “You don't know half what you're saying. You've had a hard day, and you're all tired out, and everything looks outa focus. I know--I've seen men like that sometimes when some trouble hit 'em hard and unexpected. What you want is sleep; not poetry about killing people. A man, in the shape you are in, takes to whisky. You're taking to graveyard poetry--and, if you ask _me_, that's worse than whisky. You ain't normal. What you want to do is go straight to bed. When you wake up in the morning you won't feel so bad. You won't have half as many troubles as you've got now.” “I knew you wouldn't understand it,” Val remarked coldly, still staring at him with her chin on her hands. “You won't yourself, to-morrow morning,” Kent declared unsympathetically, and called Mrs. Hawley from the kitchen. “You better put Mrs. Fleetwood to bed,” he advised gruffly. “And if you've got anything that'll make her sleep, give her a dose of it. She's so tired she can't see straight.” He was nearly to the outside door when Val recovered her speech. “You men are all alike,” she said contemptuously. “You give orders and you consider yourselves above all the laws of morality or decency; in reality you are beneath them. We shouldn't expect anything of the lower animals! How I _despise_ men!” “Now you're _talking_,” grinned Kent, quite unmoved. “Whack us in a bunch all you like--but don't make one poor devil take it all. Men as a class are used to it and can stand it.” He was laughing as he left the room, but his amusement lasted only until the door was closed behind him. “Lord!” he exclaimed, and drew a deep breath. “I'd sure hate to have that little woman say all them things about _me!_” and glanced involuntarily over his shoulder to where a crack of light showed under the faded green shade of one of the parlor windows.