ively that he startled her, "I know all about
it up to there. That was Thursday afternoon, wasn't it? Go on from then."

The interruption disconcerted her. "There isn't much more--to tell," she
went on, but a good deal less impetuously. "Except that we fought and
fought and fought. About eight o'clock that night I said I was going to
the park to see the performance;--just to get a rest from talking. Mr.
Eckstein was there and the Williamsons and James Wallace, so I asked them
all to come home with us. And Fournier and LaChaise, too. And we got on
your opera and LaChaise played part of it and then I read a lot of it
with Fournier. So they didn't go home till after three. John thought I
was keeping them there in order not to be left alone with him.--Well,
what was the good of talking, anyhow? We did get started again on Friday,
though; all day long. And Friday night we--made up, in a way. At least, I
thought we did.

"Well, and then yesterday morning Rush telephoned out from town and said
he thought John ought to come in to see Mary. She wasn't very well. I
told him to go if he liked. I was feeling perfectly awful, yesterday,
myself--and I was billed for _Thais_ last night. There isn't another
soprano up here who wouldn't have cancelled it, feeling the way I did.
But I told John that if he thought Mary needed him more than I did, he'd
better go.--I wish he had gone. After he'd telephoned to say he wasn't
coming--he'd talked to Mary herself, that time--he kept getting colder
and gloomier and more--unendurable from hour to hour. And after the
performance, we had the most horrible fight of all. He told me I had kept
him away from Mary on purpose,--because I was jealous of her. He said he
could never forgive himself for the way he'd treated her--in order to
curry favor with me. And he said that the first thing in the morning he
was going to her. That's all.--Oh, well, I said a few things to him, too.
Do you wonder?"

By way of a flourish, she flashed to her feet again at this conclusion
(she'd been up and down half a dozen times in the course of her appeal to
him as jury), and walked away to a window. But after the silence had spun
itself out to the better part of a minute, she whipped round upon him.

"Have you been listening to a word I've said?" she demanded.

"Yes," he said, but with the contradictory air of fetching himself back
from a long way off. "Truly! I've listened to every word. And I don't
wonder a bit."

"