Sue listened rather idly at first; then, as Peter's trained, nicely modulated voice swept on, lifted her head, leaned forward, watched his face. Peter felt her gaze but dared not return it. Once he stopped, flushed and hoarse, and telephoned down for ice-water. Those eyes, all alight, followed him as he rushed past her to the door and returned with the clinking water pitcher. He snatched up the manuscript and finished it--nearly half an hour of it--standing. Then he threw it on the desk with a noise that made Sue jump, and himself strode to the fireplace and stood there, mopping his face, still avoiding her eyes. She was still leaning eagerly forward. “Well,” said he now, with a rather weak effort at casualness, “what do you think of it? Of course it's a rough draft--” “Of course it is no such thing,” said she. She got up; moved to the table: took up the manuscript and turned the first pages. Then she came to the other side of the hearth with it, “What I want to know is--How did you do it?” “Oh, it's Zanin's ideas, of course; but they needed rearranging and pointing up.” “This isn't a rearrangement,” said she; and now he awoke to consciousness of the suppressed stirring quality in her voice, a quality he had not heard in it before. “It isn't a rearrangement. It's a created thing.” “Oh,” he cried, “you really think that!” “It carries the big idea. It's the very spirit of freedom. It's a--a sort of battle-cry--” She gave a little laugh--“Of course it isn't that, exactly; it's really a big vital drama. I'm talking rather wildly. But--” She confronted him; he looked past her hair at the wall. She stamped her foot. “Don't make me go on saying these inane things, please! You know as well as I do what you've done.” “What have I done?” “You've stated our faith with a force and a fineness that Zanin, even, could never get. You've said it all for us.... Oh, I owe you an apology! Zanin told you part of the truth. I didn't dream--from your plays and things you have said--that you could do this.” Peter looked at her now with breathless solemnity. “I've changed,” he said. “Something has happened.” “I'm not ashamed of changing.” She smiled. “Or of growing, even.”