"That's what I came here for." She settled more snugly into the chair, and folded her hands on her knee. He looked at them curiously, their slender whiteness, and noted, with interest, that she had no wedding ring. She continued, "I got breathless in the house. Grandmother was tired and went to bed. Peter has gone to see his cruel lady." "Why do you call her cruel?" "She won't hold out her hand to me." That simple and audacious candor overwhelmed him. He had never known anything so facile yet direct. It made life incredibly picturesque and full of color. He laughed from light-heartedness, and it came into his head that, in her company, it would be easy to believe "as many as six impossible things before breakfast." But she was continuing:-- "Don't you find her cruel?" "Electra? We haven't exchanged a dozen words in a year." "Why not?" "I'm not a notability. It's not remarkable to raise seeds for sale." "But isn't she cruel?" He thought a moment, and then answered gravely,-- "She is very opinionated. But she has high ideals. She would be unyielding. Has she been unyielding to you?" "Hasn't Peter told you?" "Not a word." "I came here expecting her to accept me as her brother's wife. She won't do it." "Won't do it? Does she say so?" "She says nothing. But she ignores me." Her cheek took on a deeper flush. She did not look at him, and he followed her gaze into the coals. "You are too proud to give her proofs?" he hesitated. She stirred uneasily in her chair. "Proud!" she said bitterly. "If I had been proud, I should never have come here at all. But I am here, and she must recognize me." Some dauntless lines had come into the delicate face and made it older. "It is absurd," she continued, "worse. Here am I living in your house--" "No! no!" he corrected her. "Not that it matters. It would be yours just the same. But it's grannie's house." "Taking her hospitality,--oh, it's a shame! a shame!" "Peter must make it right with Electra," he ventured. "Peter! He has tried. He has tried too much. Things are not right between them any more. I know that." Osmond, almost with no conscious will, went back to what he had been thinking when she came in. "Peter belongs to your Brotherhood--" "Don't say mine. It is my father's." She spoke with an unguarded warmth. "But you belong to it, too." "I used to. I used to do everything my father told me to--but not now--not now!" She looked like a beautiful rebel, the color deepened in her cheeks, her eyes darkening. Osmond could not question her, but he went back to his own puzzle. "The trouble is--about Peter--his painting has taken a back seat. He talks about the Brotherhood--little else." She nodded, looking at the fire. "I know. I know." "I've no objection to his believing in the brotherhood of man; but can't the brotherhood of man be preserved if we paint our pictures, and mind our own business generally?"