HE reached London in the afternoon, and as soon as it was evening went to Camden Town to find Logan. Only Oliver was in. She was sitting in the window smoking. There had been a tea-party, and the floor was littered with cups, plates of bread and butter and cakes, fragments of biscuit, some of which had been trodden on. Mendel surveyed this litter ruefully, and he said:-- "Why don't you wash up?" "Logan said he would. I washed up after breakfast. I'm not a servant, and he keeps on promising to have someone in to help." "Will you wash up if I help you?" "No, thanks. Logan's got to do it." "Who has been to tea?" "Oh! A funny lot. Some of Logan's fools who think he is a great man." "He is a great man," said Mendel. "Heuh! You try living with him. What's the good of being a great man if you don't make any money? It's all very well for Calthrop to live like a pig. He makes money and can do what he likes." "If you don't like it you can always clear out." "Where to? Eh? To go the round of the studios and oblige people like you? Not much! It isn't as if I was married to him. I can't make him keep me. Besides, he wouldn't let me go. If I went he would run after me. I suppose you hadn't thought of that, Mr. Kühler. You don't know what it is to care for anybody. I'd like to see some one play you and play you, and then turn you down. That would teach you a lesson, that would." "What's the matter with you?" "I'm not going to stand it any longer," she said. "I'm not going to be put on one side like dirt while you go on with your conceited talk. You're both so conceited you don't know how to hold yourselves. I'm a woman, and I stand for something in the world. A woman is more important than the biggest picture that was ever painted." "It depends upon the woman." "All right, then. _I'm_ more important. You talk about Logan keeping me. He can consider himself damned lucky I stay with him." "Oh! you're both in luck," snapped Mendel, and he sat down and refused to say another word. Oliver began to whistle and then to hum. She fidgeted in her chair. She thought she had come off rather well in the sparring match. She had been dreading Mendel's return, for since the Paris adventure she had been asserting herself, as she called it, beating Logan down, bewildering him with her extraordinary sweetness and cajolery and sudden outbursts of fury. Both had agreed to bury the memory of the last night in Paris, but the thoughts of both were centred upon it. She rejoiced that she had served him out, but she had been stirred to a degree that alarmed her. Her former condition of lazy sensual security had been broken, and she dreaded Logan's jealousy. She knew that she was not his equal in force, but she set herself to overcome him with cunning. His force would spend itself. She knew that. She must then bind him fast with tricks and lures, rouse the curiosity of his senses and keep it unsatisfied.