Anne drew her hand away quietly. This sort of thing was not to be encouraged if she were to obtain the impersonal influence over him which she had intended from the first. "That is very pretty, but I don't deserve it," she said lightly. "Come, tell me more about yourself. I want to know all about your life. It must be thrilling to be a genius!" He smiled mournfully. "Thrilling, I should say not! It is the most narrow life possible. At least mine has been so. Merely a record of travel and hard work. When I was a child we were never long enough in any one place to make any friends, besides my mother always feared they would interfere with my practicing, and later, I had become so pent-up within myself and my music that I had no further desire for them. Claire was the only person I ever saw, outside of my mother, and most of the time I was practically unconscious of her existence." "Claire--is that your wife?" inquired Anne in spite of herself. She blocked in the background of her sketch with nervous strokes. "Yes," he cast her a quick, guilty glance. Then, after a pause, "You mustn't think I meant all the rotten things I said about her the other night. I've always been very fond of the poor little thing, only as a wife she meant nothing to me. I suppose you wonder why I married her, and I admit it must seem pitiably weak, only I was in such a state at the time that I really wasn't responsible. Everything was a nightmare of jangled nerves." The vision of his mother threatening to put Claire out upon the streets if he refused to marry her, came before him. An uneven flush spread over his face. His hands clenched the arms of the chair. "Sometimes I wonder if there isn't a taint of madness in me somewhere, a rotten spot in my brain that is spreading----" He threw out his hands in a gesture of despair. She met the frantic appeal in his eyes with firm denial. "You're talking introspective drivel. Summoning prehistoric monsters out of your subconscious cavern. Don't let yourself be frightened by a few dead bones. There is neither madness nor method about you. You are simply too highly organized for your own comfort. In other words, you are a genius and must pay the penalty." He laughed more naturally. "So in your opinion every genius must be a poor fool?" "According to some standards, yes. He was made to walk on the heights, and when he is forced to descend to the valley and mingle with the rest of us his head often remains in the clouds, and he stumbles woefully." "Don't count yourself in with the rest of them, for heaven's sakes!" exclaimed Alexis, his eyes hypnotized by the bronze aureole of her hair. She encountered his gaze with a poised smile which for some inexplicable reason, angered him. "But unfortunately, or fortunately, that is precisely where I belong," she said without a tinge of her old bitterness.