She looked surprised. "Why, didn't you think what he said about you was lovely?" She smiled a little; her tone was confident and yet conciliatory. "Sometimes I think you don't realize you're celebrated, Vanny. He said you were—he told all those people so. I thought what he said was fine."

For a moment Vance thought she must be making fun of him, avenging herself by this clumsy pleasantry for his supposed neglect. But she was incapable of irony; he saw that she had really taken Hayes's oratory as a tribute to her husband's genius.

"What he said of me—that blithering rubbish? It was an insult, that's all! And that heap of lies; blowing that way before all those people about having known me since I was a kid! Good God—you didn't thank him for making an everlasting fool of me?"

Her lower lip began to tremble, and a mist of distress dimmed her face. "Nothing I ever do is right. I didn't know you didn't even want me to speak to him when we met."

"I've told you you can speak to him as much as you like. What beats me is your not seeing that he was publicly holding me up to ridicule."

Her mouth grew narrow and vindictive. "I thought the bust did that. I was grateful to him for doing the best he could so that people would look at you and not at the bust."

"Oh, God," Vance groaned. He turned away, and began to fumble with the papers on the rickety little table between bed and window where he had to do his writing. He had meant to buckle down to a hard evening's work, to get his chapters into final shape before submitting them to Mrs. Tarrant. But Laura Lou had a genius for putting him into a mood which made work or meditation equally impossible… . As he stood there sullenly, with his back to her, he heard a low sound like a child's whimper, and turned around, irritated with himself and with her.

"Oh, see here, child! Don't cry—what's the use? I didn't mean … all I meant was … "

"You hurt me so," she sobbed.

"Nonsense, Laura Lou. Listen … Don't be a goose… ." He caught her to him and felt the fever on her lips. Pressed each to each, they clung fast, groping for one another through the troubled channels of the blood.

Chapter 5

After Vance had finished reading, Halo Tarrant sat silent. The library was very still. Only one lamp was lit, on a low table near Vance's armchair; the rest of the room hung remote and shadowy about them, except when a dart of flame from the hearth woke up a row of books here and there, or made the flanks of a bronze vase glitter like a wet rock.