Weeks had gone by since his last visit to New York. He had not returned there since the evening of the Beethoven concert. His talk with his friends at the Cocoanut Tree and his long evening of musical intoxication had set his imagination working, and he had come home as from an adventure in far countries, laden with treasure to be transmuted into the flesh and blood of his creations. He had often noticed how small a spark of experience or emotion sufficed to provoke these explosions of activity, and with his booty in his breast he hurried back to his solitude as impatiently as he had left it.

But though he came home full of spiritual treasure, it was without material results. He had found no way of raising money, and he knew he must have some before the end of the month. For a fortnight past the woman who came to help Laura Lou had not shown herself. She lived some distance away, and when Vance went to hunt her up she excused herself on the plea of the cold weather and the long snowy walk down the lane from the trolley terminus. But Vance knew it was because he owed her several weeks' wages, and when she said: "I'd never have come all that way, anyhow, if it hadn't been I was sorry for your wife," he received the rebuke meekly, conscious that it was a way of reminding him of his debt.

With the coming of the dry cold Laura Lou seemed to revive, and for a while she and Vance managed to carry on the housekeeping between them, though the meals grew more and more sketchy, and it became clear even to Vance's inattentive eyes that the house was badly in need of cleaning. Carrying in the bags of coal (which he now had to fetch from the end of the lane) left on the floors a trail of black dust that Laura Lou had not the strength to scrub away, and the soil was frozen so hard that Vance could no longer bury the daily refuse at the foot of the orchard, but had to let it accumulate in an overflowing barrel. All that mattered little when she began to sing again about the house; but his nerves were set on edge by the continual interruptions to his work while he was still charged with creative energy, and often, when he got back to his desk, he would sit looking blankly at the blank page, frightened by the effort he knew his brain would refuse to make.