Hawker gestured at the picture. "That dunce of a thing. It makes me tired. It isn't worth a hang. Blame it!" "What?" Hollanden strode forward and stood before the painting with legs apart, in a properly critical manner. "What? Why, you said it was your best thing." "Aw!" said Hawker, waving his arms, "it's no good! I abominate it! I didn't get what I wanted, I tell you. I didn't get what I wanted. That?" he shouted, pointing thrust-way at it--"that? It's vile! Aw! it makes me weary." "You're in a nice state," said Hollanden, turning to take a critical view of the painter. "What has got into you now? I swear, you are more kinds of a chump!" Hawker crooned dismally: "I can't paint! I can't paint for a damn! I'm no good. What in thunder was I invented for, anyhow, Hollie?" "You're a fool," said Hollanden. "I hope to die if I ever saw such a complete idiot! You give me a pain. Just because she don't----" "It isn't that. She has nothing to do with it, although I know well enough--I know well enough----" "What?" "I know well enough she doesn't care a hang for me. It isn't that. It is because--it is because I can't paint. Look at that thing over there! Remember the thought and energy I---- Damn the thing!" "Why, did you have a row with her?" asked Hollanden, perplexed. "I didn't know----" "No, of course you didn't know," cried Hawker, sneering; "because I had no row. It isn't that, I tell you. But I know well enough"--he shook his fist vaguely--"that she don't care an old tomato can for me. Why should she?" he demanded with a curious defiance. "In the name of Heaven, why should she?" "I don't know," said Hollanden; "I don't know, I'm sure. But, then, women have no social logic. This is the great blessing of the world. There is only one thing which is superior to the multiplicity of social forms, and that is a woman's mind--a young woman's mind. Oh, of course, sometimes they are logical, but let a woman be so once, and she will repent of it to the end of her days. The safety of the world's balance lies in woman's illogical mind. I think----" "Go to blazes!" said Hawker. "I don't care what you think. I am sure of one thing, and that is that she doesn't care a hang for me!" "I think," Hollanden continued, "that society is doing very well in its work of bravely lawing away at Nature; but there is one immovable thing--a woman's illogical mind. That is our safety. Thank Heaven, it----" "Go to blazes!" said Hawker again. CHAPTER XXXIII. As Hawker again entered the room of the great windows he glanced in sidelong bitterness at the chandelier. When he was seated he looked at it in open defiance and hatred. Men in the street were shovelling at the snow. The noise of their instruments scraping on the stones came plainly to Hawker's ears in a harsh chorus, and this sound at this time was perhaps to him a _miserere_. "I came to tell you," he began, "I came to tell you that perhaps I am going away." "Going away!" she cried. "Where?"