“When I found out what Betty had done I said some savage things, Henry. Called her a coward. Oh, I was very superior--very sure of myself. And here's the grotesque irony of it.” Her voice was unsteady. “Here's what one little unexpected contact with reality can do to the sort of scornful independent mind I had. Twenty-four hours--less than that--after Betty went I found myself soberly considering doing the same thing.” “Marrying?” The Worm's voice was suddenly low and a thought husky. She nodded. “A man you don't love?” “I've had moments of thinking I loved him, hours of wondering how I could, possibly.” He was some time in getting out his next remark. It was, “You'd better wait.” She threw out her hands in an expressive way she had. “Wait? Yes, that's what I've told myself, Henry. But I've lost my old clear sense of things. My nerves aren't steady. I have queer reactions.” Then she closed her lips as she had once before on this day, up there on the avenue. She even seemed to compose herself. Waters Coryell came over from the other table and for a little time talked down to them from his attitude of self-perfection. When he had gone the Worm said, to make talk, “How are the pictures coming on?” Then he saw that he had touched the same tired nerve center. Her flush began to return. “Not very well,” she said; and thought for a moment, with knit brows and pursed lips. She threw out her hands again. “They're quarreling, Henry.” “Zanin and Peter?” She nodded. “It started over Zanin's publicity. He is a genius, you know. Any sort of effort that will help get the picture across looks legitimate to him.” “Of course,” mused the Worm, trying to resume the modestly judicial habit of mind that had seemed lately to be leaving him, “I suppose, in a way, he is right. It is terribly hard to make a success of such an enterprise. It is like war---the only possible course is to win.” “I suppose so,” said she, rather shortly. “But then there's the expense side of it. Zanin keeps getting the bit in his teeth.... Lately I've begun to see that these quarrels are just the surface. The real clash lies deeper. It's partly racial, I suppose, and partly--” “Personal?” “Yes.” She threw out her hands. “They're fighting over me. I don't mind it so much in Peter. He has only lately come to see things our way. He never made the professions Zanin has of being superior to passions, jealousies, the sense of possession.” She paused, brooding, oblivious now to her surroundings, slowly shaking her head. “Zanin has always said that the one real wrong is to take or accept love where it isn't real enough to justify itself. But now when I won't see him--those are the times he runs wild with the business. Then Peter has to row with him to check the awful waste of money. Peter's rather wonderful about it. He never loses his courage.” This was a new picture of Peter. The Worm gave thought to it.