For two summers Ben had made no protest, but the third summer, when the war was over and the allowance again possible, he urged David not to go back to Newport. David flatly refused to yield. He said he saw no reason why he should go on taking Ben’s money when this simple way of earning a full living was open to him. Wasn’t Ben’s whole theory that everyone should be self-supporting? Why not be consistent? Ignorant people might imagine that two affectionate brothers could not quarrel over an issue purely affectionate. But the Moretons did quarrel—more bitterly than ever before, and that is saying a great deal. With the extraordinary tenacity of memory that develops under strong emotion, they each contrived to recall and to mention everything which the other had done that was wrong, ridiculous, or humiliating since their earliest days. They parted with the impression on David’s part that Ben thought him a self-indulgent grafter, and on Ben’s side that David thought him a bully solely interested in imposing his will on those unfortunate enough to be dependent on him. It was after half past four when, having walked up five flights of stairs, he let himself into his modest flat on the top floor of an old-fashioned brownstone house. As he opened the door, he called, “Nora!” No beautiful partner of a free-love affair appeared, but an elderly woman in spectacles who had once been Professor Moreton’s cook, and now, doing all the housework for Ben, contrived to make him so comfortable that the editor of a more radical paper than his own had described the flat as “a bourgeois interior.” “Nora,” said Ben, “put something in my bag for the night—I’m going to Newport in a few minutes.”