Mais, hélas! quelle raison Te fait quitter la maison? . . . Et qu'est-ce que je puis faire Que je ne fasse pour toi? DURING the three days of René's absence Ann did not speak to a soul. She found the comfort of mortification in reading the attorney's letter from Edinburgh. It made her feel hardly used, and that was pleasant. René had crept into her life under pretext of being at an end of his resources when he was incredibly rich. It was not fair: it was abominable. The grievance became such an obsession as to obscure her real dread and anxiety. In her almost crazy desire to defend herself against the alien power that was coming to him she tore up the letter and burned it. He would not know. She would keep him. She would get him to take her away. It was a good idea of Casey's. They would all go down into the country. Casey said there were cinemas in the country. Through the whole of the last night she sat brooding in the darkness. Every now and then she would pretend that he was there in the next room, in the bed, and she would cling to this pretense until she had deceived herself and could almost believe that she heard him there. Yes. He was stirring in his sleep as he often did. She would go into the room and run her hand over the pillows. And her disappointment was a relief. It would have been terrible to have found him there when she knew he was away. Where was he? Whom was he with? Why didn't that beast Kilner know, since it was all that beast's doing, that sly hulk with his sarcastic way of speaking and his eyes that looked at you as if you were some sort of animal. It must be Kilner who had got him away. She brooded herself into hatred. In the morning she watched the painter go out, and spat after him. Then she took a knife, went up to his room, found the picture on which he was working, and slashed it to ribbons. "Naked women!" she cried as she cut away at the canvas. "Naked women! That'll teach the filthy brute." It chanced that she was out when René returned, and he went up to Kilner's room in the hope of finding him. He saw the havoc that had been wrought, and understood who had done it. When the painter returned René was still trying to piece the canvas together. Without a word Kilner took it in his hands, and sat fingering it. He said: "What luck! What infernal luck! I thought it was going to put me on my feet. One of the Professors had been down to see it and was excited about it. He thought he could get it sold for me. There's months of work in it." "I shouldn't have thought----" "I told you she hated me. I didn't think she'd be clever enough to know how to get back at me. Oh! they are clever, these women, in their own mean little way. Drudges, they are, and drabs. It's men like you, Fourmy, keep them so, asking them for love and taking the much they choose to give you, and when you sicken of it they take their revenge where they can." "I never thought----"