Vance continued to sit there. He had imagined he had suffered on the day when he had seen his grandfather down by the river with Floss Delaney: poor simpleton! That was a wound to his raw senses. He had escaped from it by writing it out and selling it to an editor. But now there was not a vein of his body, not a cell of his brain, not a dream or a vision of his soul, that was not hurt, disabled… . This woman who had kindled in him the light by which he lived had sat there complacently telling him that she believed in his work, that her husband and old Frenside believed in it … and had thought she was leaving him comforted!

But did she really think so? Or was all she had said only a protective disguise, the conscientious effort to repress emotions corresponding to his own? He had an idea she would be very conscientious, full of scruples he wasn't sure he wholly understood. For if she hadn't cared as much as he did, why should she have devoted all those hours to helping him? If it was just for the good of the New Hour, she was indeed the ideal wife for an editor! But no: those afternoons had been as full for her as for him. What was that phrase she had pointed out, in the volume of Keats's Letters she had given him—about loading every rift with gold? That was what they had done to their hours together: both of them.

Suddenly, as he sat brooding, he heard a door open: then, after a moment's delay, a step coming through the empty rooms. The carpets muffled it, the stealing twilight seemed to envelop it; but it was hers, hers surely—who else would have business there? She was returning, coming back to say all the things that were surging in his heart… . He sat still, not daring to look up.

The step drew nearer, reached the threshold, clicked on the parquet of the library. He started up and saw Mrs. Tracy. In the faint light her face looked so drawn and wretched that he thought she had been taken ill again, and went toward her hurriedly.

"Why, what's the matter?"

"Matter? It is a woman you come to meet here then!" She had reached the table, and with a quick pounce picked up a glove which lay there. "That's what you call your literary work, is it?" she triumphed venomously.

Vance stood silent. His mind was still so charged with ardent and agonizing thoughts that he could not grasp what she was saying. What was she talking about, what was she trying to insinuate, what had she come for? Once more he caught in her face the gleam of animosity he had been conscious of, just below the surface, ever since he had gone with Upton to the ball game.