He was conscious of an immense weight of sadness in his breast, but it lessened neither his pique nor his astonishment. Full of mastership, his ideas of womankind were based chiefly on the devotion accorded him by his mother, by Annie Lawless, and, until then, by Rachel herself. Such whole-souled devotion he accepted as his rightful due. Therefore Rachel's downright and uncompromising attitude astounded him. Her anger, when she learned that another young lady was interested in his affairs, was justified, he admitted. He had not been open with her. What he could not overlook, however, was her allusion to his mother's disappointment if his plans with the lithographers failed to materialize. If she had cared for him, she would have spared him that barbed thrust which even in memory caused his nerves to tingle. If she had cared for him she would have prevented his going. But she had allowed him to go without a hope of ever seeing him again. He began to laugh bitterly; presently lifting his long frame out of the car seat, he went for a drink of water. He stood with the cup in his hand, forgetting to drink. He could not endure that a woman should scorn and repudiate him. The quarrel with Rachel shook him all the more violently, as, with his habits of mind, he was unaccustomed to such tempests. He returned to his seat and fixed his eyes once more on the flying landscape. She had shone upon him like sunlight, and passion had awakened--passion and interest and something besides. She had stormed at him like a tempest and finally had mystified him with a fog, best proof of all that hers was the womanhood for his manhood. But did he understand? The pebble rolling down a hill has as much comprehension of the force that summons it--indeed it has more, for the pebble obeys the force and Emil St. Ives did not obey. Instead he set himself squarely about and took his way back to New York with a smouldering eye; but a fierce, surprised bird whose pinions had been clipped might have worn just such a look, and he kept ruffling the feathers of his vanity, for the wings of his egotism drooped. Presently he produced paper and pencil, but still boiling, it was sometime before he could control his thoughts. Finally, he began to sketch roughly a plan for an instrument; the next day his humiliation had so far abated as to permit of his working steadily on the scheme; and when he reached New York his complacency was practically restored. On alighting from the train he found awaiting him a little eager, flushing, paling being in the shape of a woman.