She raised her tired eyes and fixed them on his. "You meant that I'd better not try any more of my talks on your clever literary friends? But I don't intend to, Vanny; I'm sure you're right. My message is for the plain folks who want to be told how to get to God… . I know they'll come to me in their hundreds. I don't mean to give up or lose courage because I can't reach the hearts of a few super-cultivated intellectuals… . All that doesn't matter, as long as I can make money enough for us all to live on—does it?"

Vance got up and bent over to kiss her. He could not tell her at the moment that what he really wanted was to make her give up her lecturing tour altogether. Their talk had carried him back to the old days when she had been his only listener, had understood him with her heart if not with her mind; he could not bear, just then, to say anything that would bring the anxious humbled look into her eyes. He must be off, he explained, he had to hurry down to the office; but he promised to be waiting for her when she called after lunch to see Laura Lou.

He knew it was only a postponement: he had already decided that he could not live on his grandmother's earnings. Everything in his life seemed a postponement nowadays: morally as well as materially he was living from hand to mouth. But his intelligence still refused to bow to expediency; it was impossible for him to think of living on the money which Mrs. Scrimser's own ignorance was prepared to extract from that of others. His long hours of study and meditation at the Willows had made any kind of intellectual imposture seem the lowest form of dishonesty.

His grandmother's hour with Laura Lou nearly undermined his resolution. Seeing them thus—Laura Lou in one of her strange moments of loveliness, her head resting contentedly against the pillows, her willing hand yielded to Mrs. Scrimser's, and the latter settled in the rocking chair by the bed, her great person giving out an aura of good-humour and reassurance—it seemed to Vance that nothing mattered except that these two should understand each other. If only the conditions had been reversed, and he had been able to provide a home for his grandmother! He saw all his difficulties solved; Laura Lou soothed and sustained, the housekeeping somehow managed, and he himself with a free corner in which to go on undisturbed with his work… . This was precisely what Mrs. Scrimser and "Storecraft" were offering him; and the irony of the contrast burnt itself into him. He made up his mind to see that very day the publisher who had made him such tempting proposals. Perhaps there was still some hope of readjustment with the New Hour and Dreck and Saltzer.