“To be absolutely truthful, then, this is what I said: I said that I appreciated his kindness and was grateful for the offer. But my mind was made up. I would not live upon his charity and draw a large salary for doing nothing except be a little, damned tame house-poet led around in leash and exhibited at his wife's club meetings. . . . That was about all, I think. We shook hands at the end. He didn't seem to like me any the less for . . . Why, Madeline, have I offended you? My language was pretty strong, I know, but--” She had bowed her head upon her arms amid the sofa cushions and was crying. He sprang to his feet and bent over her. “Why, Madeline,” he said again, “I beg your pardon. I'm sorry--” “Oh, it isn't that,” she sobbed. “It isn't that. I don't care what you said.” “What is it, then?” She raised her head and looked at him. “It is you,” she cried. “It is myself. It is everything. It is all wrong. I--I was so happy and--and now I am miserable. Oh--oh, I wish I were dead!” She threw herself upon the cushions again and wept hysterically. He stood above her, stroking her hair, trying to soothe her, to comfort her, and all the time he felt like a brute, a heartless beast. At last she ceased crying, sat up and wiped her eyes with her handkerchief. “There!” she exclaimed. “I will not be silly any longer. I won't be! I WON'T! . . . Now tell me: Why have you changed so?” He looked down at her and shook his head. He was conscience-stricken and fully as miserable as she professed to be. “I don't know,” he said. “I am older and--and--and I DON'T see things as I used to. If that book of mine had appeared three years ago I have no doubt I should have believed it to be the greatest thing ever printed. Now, when people tell me it is and I read what the reviewers said and all that, I--I DON'T believe, I KNOW it isn't great--that is, the most of it isn't. There is some pretty good stuff, of course, but--You see, I think it wasn't the poems themselves that made it sell; I think it was all the fool tommyrot the papers printed about me, about my being a hero and all that rubbish, when they thought I was dead, you know. That--” She interrupted. “Oh, don't!” she cried. “Don't! I don't care about the old book. I'm not thinking about that. I'm thinking about you. YOU aren't the same--the same toward me.” “Toward you, Madeline? I don't understand what you mean.” “Yes, you do. Of course you do. If you were the same as you used to be, you would let Father help you. We used to talk about that very thing and--and you didn't resent it then.” “Didn't I? Well, perhaps I didn't. But I think I remember our speaking sometimes of sacrificing everything for each other. We were to live in poverty, if necessary, and I was to write, you know, and--” “Stop! All that was nonsense, nonsense! you know it.” “Yes, I'm afraid it was.” “You know it was. And if you were as you used to be, if you--” “Madeline!” “What? Why did you interrupt me?”