Ted was in his den, a place sacred to those masculine pursuits and possessions which he did not share with her. Only for momentous affairs did she invade the shabby, comfortable, littered room, and now Ted glanced up at her from his pipe and papers with serious expectancy. "I'd like you to read this," she said, holding out the little manuscript. "Now? Is it important?" "Yes, now. It is very important. I must have a talk with you when you've read it." He took it from her, and she sat down to await his verdict. The story was short. Her suspense could have lasted but a little while. But Eric's fate was at stake, and the minutes seemed as laggard as years. She had given up her own talent; that it was now a crippled thing within her was because she had renounced it, long before, for Eric's life. But she would not easily sacrifice Eric's talent--if talent he really had. She was prepared to fight for it, if need be. Yet, as she watched Ted, reading with inscrutable face, her heart grew heavy within her for dread of dissension, of struggle between them. That hot, rebellious heart of hers had come at last to a sort of peace. The affection between herself and Ted, in the past few quiet years, had become for her, unconsciously, more and more of a haven. She had given up much to the end that she and Ted might live together in harmony, and she sickened now at the prospect of conflict. For at conflict, old wounds would open, regrets long firmly suppressed would rush upon her, a devastating flood. If she had to fight for Eric, she knew that she would fight with the strength of old bitterness, bitterness that she had striven to outlive. And she could not bear that this should happen. She could not bear that her affection for Ted should be thus jeopardized. She remembered, as she sat there, the anger she had felt toward him when he had condemned Alice North for her art--and, however innocently, through Alice North, herself. She remembered how indignant she had felt, how hurt and _divided_. And she remembered, too--thinking, against her will, of Peter--how divided from Ted she had felt in later years, in years not so long gone that she could recall them calmly. She remembered how she had come, finally, to see Ted, and his part in the destruction of her talent, all too clearly--and how her heart had turned from him then to one whom she had no right to love. She had driven her heart back to its appointed path; she had constrained it to its duty--in so far as the heart can be constrained. She had even achieved the supreme triumph of keeping alive for Ted, through disillusion and passionate resentment, that very real affection with which they had begun life together--but she trembled now at thought of any further pressure being brought to bear upon it. It was as if she held out her hands to her husband, crying: "Oh, let me love you! Do nothing that shall make it impossible for me to love you!"