A little way from Tommy, Warren Venables stood, a leaf torn from a sketch-book thrust beneath his hat to guard forehead and eyes. Tommy had seen him some time ago; he was rather bored when Venables looked round and saw him, and strolled towards him. 'Interesting,' said Venables concisely; and Tommy nodded. Venables half looked over the artist's shoulder, with a careless 'May I see?' Tommy shut his notebook with deliberation, and put his pencil into his pocket. Then, after a moment's interval, he flushed, slowly and with great completeness. 'You know it's a rotten rag,' he said, hurling down the other's screen with an angry blow that sent it crashing in pieces. Venables, looking at his resentment for a moment in silence, said simply: 'I beg your pardon, Crevequer.' He, too, had flushed. He was learning, it seemed, the 'insolent flimsiness' (as Prudence had it) of all his screens, this among the rest. He wondered for how long Crevequer had known that he 'knew it was a rotten rag'--or, rather, for how long he had cared. The red, fine ash drifted before a push of wind into Tommy's eyes and mouth; his sullen anger surged in him, and broke stammeringly out. Inconsequently, he was glad to see how the soft, drifting dust lay on Venables' coat and very clean collar. 'You thought--you thought I--we--didn't know a thing about it, or about anything else, all this time. Well, w-what business was it of yours? and--and why couldn't you have let us alone?' Querulously he stuttered it out, and coughed out the dust as he ended. Venables said again, 'I beg your pardon.' Tommy glowered at him resentfully. 'That's no good. You--you had no business....' His own outbreak had taken him by surprise. He was seeing the pinched look round Betty's lips, the strained heaviness of her eyes. Venables, his quiet face very inexpressive beneath the paper guard, said, 'No, possibly not;' and that again took Tommy by surprise. His flare of anger flickered down to a sullen smoulder; it seemed to lack fuel. Venables' silence, as they stood together, seemed to put him, as usual, in the right. After all, though 'what one can take' may be the only thing that counts on one side, what has been offered can hardly be left out of a sane vision of the other. Tommy, resentfully aware of this, was stirred to surprise, not for the first time, at the part latterly played by Venables in this matter. It seemed hardly characteristic; a certain reckless unwisdom it had, which was incongruous. Tommy wondered whether it was that play had at last grown suddenly to earnest, an irresistible tide swamping judgment, or whether this late development might perhaps be sheer amends.