"So much is accomplished for you, then. You will never be content again with a play that has not. Oh, I don't mean ostensible good, melodramatically contrasted with obvious bad, but the subtle inspiration of real artists--that marvellous flexibility of line and largeness of meaning that fits about every life! Just as you can draw fresh strength again and again from a great poem; so, in performing a great play--one does not act, but lives!" "Are you going?" she questioned absently. "Yes, I confess I haven't been so consumed in years----" She drew close to him.... "It has been dramatic, if not literary, hasn't it?" Her nostrils dilated and her lower lip was drawn back between her teeth. He smiled. "I feel burnt out, too," she went on softly. "It has been strange to be with you again--almost like--those early mornings.... Did you ever hear me calling you--'way off there in the West? I used to lie awake, all feverish after you went away, calling in a whisper, 'Quentin--Quentin!...' It seemed you must come, if you were alive. There were times after you went away, that I would have given this week's victory, which I saw from afar,--to have you rush in for just one hour!... In God's name," she cried suddenly, "is there really this sort of honor in living man--is it because you hate me--or do you have to drink to take a woman in your arms? You, who used to be--singing flames?" Charter was not unattracted, but his self-command was strangely imperious. There was magnetism now in the old passion--but a flutter of wings broke the attraction.... Darkness covered the wings, and the song was stilled; yet in that faint rustling, was enchantment which changed to brute matter--these open arms and the rising breast. "I'm afraid it is as you said--about the anæmic priest," he muttered laughingly.... And then it occurred to him that there might have been a trick to her tempting.... From this point he was sexless and could pity her, though his nerves were raw from her verbal punishments. It was altogether new in his experience--this word-whipping; and though he had not sharpened a sentence in retaliation, he could not but see the ghastly way in which a woman is betrayed by her temper, which checks a man's passion like a sudden fright. Between a woman given to rages and her lover--lies a naked sword. Consummate, in truth, is the siren who has mastered the art of silence.... Selma Cross sank back into a chair. The world's wear was on her brow and under her eyes, as she laughed bitterly. "You always had a way of making me sick of life," she said strangely. "I wonder if ever there was a humiliation so artistically complete as mine?"