For the first time she looked at him. “Mr. Holland,” she said, “you must think me singularly unobservant. Do you suppose I don’t see that you dislike my brother. You refused the pencil—you did refuse it plainly enough—because Billy had given it to me. I will not offer it to you again. I know that Billy sometimes does rub people up the wrong way, but I should think any one of any discernment could see that his faults are only faults of manner.” She said this almost appealingly, and Geoffrey unable to agree, turned with something like a groan, and resting his elbows on the mantelpiece, covered his face with his hands. “Do you suppose that he does not see how you feel toward him? Are you by any chance assuming that he bears with your manner on account of his own comfort? You might at least be generous or acute enough to see that it is only for my sake that he exercises so much self-control. He does not want to make my position here more unendurable by quarrelling with you. It makes me furious to see what you force him to put up with, the way you speak to him, and look at him, as if he were your slave, or a disobedient dog. His self-control is wonderful. I admire him more than I can say.” “And is my self-control nothing?” he asked, without moving his hands from his face. “Yours? I don’t see any exercise of yours. Circumstances have put us at your mercy, you are rich and fortunate, and as insolent as you choose to be. Self-control? I don’t see any evidence of it.” “No?” he said, and turning, looked at her with a violence that might have set her on the right track. Under his eyes she looked down and probably in the instant forgot all that she had been saying and feeling, for when he added: “I love you,” her hands moved toward his, and she made no resistance when he took her in his arms. VII McVay was left so long at the piano that he finally resorted to a series of discords in order to recall himself to Holland’s mind. His existence, if he had only realised the fact, was so completely forgotten that he might have made his escape with a good half hour to spare before either of the others appreciated that the music had ceased. Not knowing this, however, he did not dare stop his playing for an instant, until sheer physical fatigue interfered. It was at this point that the discords began, and brought Geoffrey into the hall. The disposal of McVay for the night was a question to which Geoffrey had given a great deal of thought. The cedar closet presented itself as a safe prison, but in the face of McVay’s repeated assertions that the air had barely sufficed to support him during his former occupancy, it looked like murder to insist. Geoffrey finally, when bed-time came, locked him in a dressing-room off his own room. The window—the room was on the third floor—gave on empty space, and against the only door he placed his own bed, so that escape seemed tolerably difficult.