_Grinnidge_, getting up to fill his pipe: “That was a pleasant thing to do.” _Ransom_: “I told her that if it amused her, to keep on; I would be only too glad to give her all—the hints I could, but that I oughtn’t to encourage her. She seemed a good deal hurt. I fancied at the time that she thought I was tired of having her with me so much.” _Miss Reed_: “Oh, _did_ you, indeed!” To _Miss Spaulding_, who bends an astonished glance upon her from the piano: “The man in this book is the most _conceited_ creature, Nettie. Play chords—something very subdued—ah!” _Miss Spaulding_: “What are you talking about, Ethel?” _Ransom_: “That was at night; but the next day she came up smiling, and said that if I didn’t mind she would keep on—for amusement; she wasn’t a bit discouraged.” _Miss Reed_: “Oh!—Go on, Nettie; don’t let my outbursts interrupt you.” _Ransom_: “I used to fancy sometimes that she was a little sweet on me.” _Miss Reed_: “You wretch!—Oh, scales, Nettie! Play scales!” _Miss Spaulding_: “Ethel Reed, are you crazy?” _Ransom_, after a thoughtful moment: “Well, so it went on for the next seven or eight weeks. When we weren’t sketching in the meadows, or on the mountain-side, or in the old punt on the pond, we were walking up and down the farmhouse piazza together. She used to read to me when I was at work. She had a heavenly voice, Grinnidge.” _Miss Reed_: “Oh, you silly, silly thing!—Really this book makes me sick, Nettie.” _Ransom_: “Well, the long and the short of it was, I was hit—_hard_, and I lost all courage. You know how I am, Grinnidge.” _Miss Reed_, softly: “Oh, poor fellow!” _Ransom_: “So I let the time go by, and at the end I hadn’t said anything.” _Miss Reed_: “No, sir! You _hadn’t_!” _Miss Spaulding_ gradually ceases to play, and fixes her attention wholly upon _Miss Reed_, who bends forward over the register with an intensely excited face. _Ransom_: “Then something happened that made me glad, for twenty-four hours at least, that I hadn’t spoken. She sent me the money for twenty-five lessons. Imagine how I felt, Grinnidge! What could I suppose but that she had been quietly biding her time, and storing up her resentment for my having told her she couldn’t learn to paint, till she could pay me back with interest in one supreme insult?” _Miss Reed_, in a low voice: “Oh, how could you think such a cruel, vulgar thing?” _Miss Spaulding_ leaves the piano, and softly approaches her, where she has sunk on her knees beside the register. _Ransom_: “It was tantamount to telling me that she had been amusing herself with me instead of my lessons. It remanded our whole association, which I had got to thinking so romantic, to the relation of teacher and pupil. It was a snub—a heartless, killing snub; and I couldn’t see it in any other light.” _Ransom_ walks away to the window, and looks out.